


THE AFFAIR.

by whitesilverandmercury



Category: Attack on Titan, Shingeki no Kyojin, aot, snk - Fandom
Genre: Dark Comedy, Levi crossdressing, M/M, Midlife Crises, Profanity, Sex, Turf War, Violence, YEAH I SAID LEVI CROSSDRESSING, a pulp fiction-red-in bruges mafia opera tribute totally unrelated to blood/covenant, aka: what not to do abroad, awkward no street smarts never shot a gun before businessman erwin, broken russian, can you tell it's another russian mafia fic, captain america jokes, criminal activity, eren & erwin spending a lot of time together, guns & powder & all the other international crime syndicate fixings, jean k. arm candy for marco bodt in an expensive italian suit, mafia business deals, mafia hit jobs, mafia vacation houses, not GORE but violence, pretending to know things about guns & st petersburg, references to hardcore drug use & prostitution, warehouse raves & warehouse raids, whiskey on the rocks & screwdriver cocktails, yakuza princess bodyguards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-08 17:46:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5507042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesilverandmercury/pseuds/whitesilverandmercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin Smith is in town for a work conference and an affair. It’s what Nile says normal, admirable men do in the throes of a midlife crisis. But he never gets around to it after accidentally witnessing a turf war hit job at the very massage parlor he’s seconds from visiting. Luckily, he’s got Eren, a Russian mafia former junkie maybe-hitman probably-prostitute who wants to help—as long as Erwin’s willing to repay the favor by helping him defect from the organization. Running from a motley crew of sophisticated criminals, Erwin gets caught up in the midst of Eren, a mafia queen named Petra, and, among others, Levi the “clean-up guy”…who has a few conditions before helping get Erwin out of the country. And really, Erwin wasn’t asking for a paradigmatic shift in himself as a person—all he wanted was an affair. // any trans. will be at bottom of chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gunshots, a Warehouse, and a Russian

**{st petersburg, russia | wednesday night.}**

The work conference didn’t start until midmorning tomorrow. Erwin really should have just retired to his executive suite, but sleeping through the long flight from New York City had really messed up his internal clock.

        There was something sort of dreamy about St Petersburg, dreamy and a little depressed.

        The heart of the city had no skyscrapers like the one in the States in which Erwin worked, just a collection of old buildings, abandoned history, sad leftovers from nineteenth-century glory all pale water-stained facades and slanted gray roofs. Golden domes and cupolas swelled along the skyline, clustered here and there with sleek new business complexes as night lights scintillated off the bay.

        The massage parlor was called “Deep Relax Spa,” which Erwin knew only because the sign was in English—and judging by the few corporate-type characters he’d observed going in and out for the last forty-five minutes from the MakDonald’s at the corner, it catered to the crowd in town for business so he was in luck.

        Well, it wasn’t all businessmen. He saw a woman drift by, too, exiting from a side door and pausing just barely inside the reach of a streetlamp to adjust her scarf, check something inside her thick double-breasted coat. In doing so she offered a glimpse of a smooth, figure-hugging cocktail dress, her nearly sheer black lace hose. She nuzzled deep into her coat, tossed strawberry-blonde hair out of her eyes, and strode off down the sidewalk and out of sight as fiercely poised as if she’d been walking in heels and a tight little dress her whole life. Maybe a worker, Erwin thought. Or—maybe a customer—it was possible, right?

        It was somewhere between ten and eleven p.m. Certain parts of the city were obviously just waking up—the clubs and bars, the hotel lobbies—but this particular street felt a little dark and forgotten. The slap of the river on the other side of the sidewalk was both beautiful and somewhat ominous, and Erwin knew in a dull, intuitive place that the longer he stood staring at the massage parlor from the opposite side of the street, the less safe he was and more out of place he seemed.

        He didn’t exactly look like a native, especially not with a _St Petersburg For Beginners!_ rolled up and sticking out of his bag. Anxiety left a chalky taste in his mouth. Or maybe the McDonald’s coffee had. Throat tight, Erwin worried suddenly about how nice his hair looked. He’d stressed for hours over what to pack, what to wear to a foreign brothel. He’d settled for a pinstriped shirt and high-collared coat from some iconic British fashion house with a downtown department store back home. He was actually still a little cold, maybe from nerves, and—

        There was a short, sharp whistle, the kind through the teeth, and then someone called: “ _Oye_ —you, you don’t want to go in there.”

        Erwin bristled and searched the near-empty sidewalk for the source of the voice. English; it had been English. Faintly lyrical, accented English, but English all the same.

        A young man stood just a few stooped and smashed parking meters up the sidewalk, staring at Erwin in a catlike way.

        Erwin cleared his throat. Heat throbbed to his face with every embarrassed pound of his heart. He waved a hand and managed to sound very genuine when he said, “Oh! I was just looking, is all.” Frantically, he scrambled for anything he’d retained from the Learn Russian! tape to which he’d fallen asleep on the plane. “ _Ne znayu—kogda ya idu_?”

        The young man squinted at him, doubtfully. Either he was very small, or the parka he wore was very big, because he looked like he was swimming in it. “You don’t know when you’re going?”

        Erwin heaved a sigh and scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. He meant to say he didn’t know _where_ he was going. “Sorry. _Ne znayu gde ya idu_.”

        “ _Ne pravil’no. Kuda, ne gde_ ,” the young man corrected rapidly but offhandedly. Then he demanded, “Hello, can you not hear that I speak English?” His voice cut like a knife though a soft, clever smile flashed across his face under the dull streetlights.

        Erwin’s heart sank. Who knew what the young man wanted from him? Dear God, he had terrible street smarts; Nile always told him his bank account and a glass of whiskey redeemed him but he had the worst street smarts and now here he was in a foreign country stupidly putting them to the ultimate test—

        The young man in the parka took a slow thoughtful breath, then blurted, “You’re not lost. You’re just trying to decide whether or not to get a very special massage. I know men like you. Men like you go to places like this all the time. But I’m telling you, _don’t go in there_. Not tonight. Find somewhere else.”

        Erwin’s face burned. He turned, brow knotting. “Why?” he demanded. “Why should I listen to you?” He normally wouldn’t be so terse and unfriendly, but he wanted to seem like a confident tourist instead of a mugging target tourist. He was also a little embarrassed to have been caught outside a sex business, and a little panicky to be derailed long enough for second thoughts to start.

        Suddenly, and rather eerily, Erwin noticed how empty this particular street was now.

        Everyone and everything had retreated from it, like the stillness before a real winter storm. Nervously, he checked his surroundings, looked over his shoulder, at alleys and distant corners. He was about to get jumped, wasn’t he? There was no doubt. He was—

        What sounded like fireworks popped once from inside the massage parlor, shattering the tense quiet.

        Another, two more.

        And then silence.

        Girls’ voices, high and tight, burst from the back door of the place. They bounced off the surrounding buildings wildly. The girls themselves wrestled into coats and shoes as they abandoned Deep Relax Spa and bumbled about, panicked. A shadow moved near the open door. Someone from inside was looking out, checking the street, watching the girls leave—watching Erwin watch them leave.

        The young man in the parka snatched Erwin by the wrist and took off running with him.

        It hit Erwin then that the fireworks sound had been _gunshots_.

        The kid in the parka—or maybe he wasn’t a kid, just compact as Erwin had thought—was very light on his feet, and seven blocks later Erwin was wondering if jogging every morning before work mattered at all because every heavy breath was a stab in his chest and his heart was pounding so hard, he could feel it in his fingertips. But perhaps that was more the fear than anything else.

        Back in the parts of St Petersburg that still had lights, and people, and taxis, the young man in the parka pushed Erwin up against a wall across from a very happening bar and practically stood on tiptoe to reach Erwin’s ear as he hissed, “Come with me, America, if you want me to save your life.”

###

Erwin wished Marie was there, because Marie would at least have had her emergency bottle of Xanax. Erwin thought a Xanax or two sounded splendid right about now.

        They were in a taxi. The young man in the parka, talking rather casually with the driver. The driver, leisurely veering his way at the young man’s directions. Erwin sat stiff and confused, pressed up against the passenger door. The car was a lot smaller than he’d expected; he was tall, yes, but he felt like a giant in the backseat, nearly hunched forward against his own knees.

        The young man in the parka looked at him then. For a moment, Erwin thought he was just measuring him, but then he spoke—in English again, thank God. It was intensely stressful to be surrounded by a language he couldn’t speak, disorienting and unexpectedly lonely.

        “My name is Eren,” the young man said, amber eyes wide and owl-like. “Don’t worry, you’re fine. I promise.”

        Somehow, Erwin both believed he meant it but couldn’t really believe it was true.

        The lights of the city rolled over them in the backseat of the taxi. The driver steered with his knee for a moment to unwrap a stick of Spearmint gum, then passed one back to Eren in the parka. Eren took it. “ _Spasibo!_ ”

        Nile had not warned Erwin about this part.

At the bar last Friday night, Nile had said, “You need to have an affair.” And Erwin had almost choked on his beer, cutting Nile a frantic glance through the droning dark, the low music and chatter of pool balls. Nile had just shrugged and toasted to his own suggestion.

        “An affair?” Erwin had been appalled—not quite at the proposition itself, but at how absolutely obvious it seemed as the next step in a midlife crisis.

        Nile had given him a look, that kind of foxlike look with the dancing brows and lowered face that reminded Erwin of high school and breaking into the football field at midnight to spray paint _M – will you go to prom with me?_ along the forty-yard line—that same look he’d given Erwin the week before his wedding, at the bachelor party, with the strippers and the cash to make sure Marie saw no questionable credit card statements.

        “I couldn’t have an affair,” Erwin had insisted, trying not to seem ashamed of his own unwillingness in the face of Nile’s admirable self-surety.

        “You can do whatever you want to.” Nile had shrugged again, his bar night leather jacket crinkling with compensation and desperation. Smiling charmingly at the young pretty bartender down by the tap, he added, “You just won’t _let_ yourself.”

        Erwin had nursed his beer in the dimly-lit bar and thought about it—honestly, objectively, logically.

        He and Marie were doing well for themselves, which high school sweethearts didn’t always manage. They had a mortgage and a timeshare. They also had a dog and stock investments, a wine rack, and Erwin went jogging in the morning before work and Marie had yoga-pilates class before dinner and sometimes they went to comedy shows on weekends. Marie made weird faces when her friends asked if she and Erwin were starting a family any time soon, and she thought Erwin could stand to try more adventurous ties, and they hadn’t had sex in months and talked more to their friends than to each other but they were just like any other normal couple in their particular tax bracket, Erwin thought.

        So an affair sort of made sense. What else was there for a midlife crisis? Affairs never seemed to trouble Nile; in fact, it all seemed to make Nile’s life better. It was an outlet with no baggage, that left no trace. It was normal. Everyone had affairs.

        “You need excitement,” Nile had explained. “You’ve become a zombie, man. A total robot. Spice it up. Are you going out of town anytime soon?”

        Yes, he was going out of town. Langdon and Lawrence, the Fortune 500 interior design and architecture firm he and Nile worked for, was sending him to Russia for a huge conference where they really wanted to impress a German client.

        Nile slapped Erwin’s back. “Erwin Smith,” he’d said, in a firm way, “you’re a handsome, successful guy. Have an international affair. Everyone does it. It’s the way God made the world. Listen, go to an Asian massage parlor. They might take your wallet, though, so just make sure there’s nothing important in it. It happened to me once. Oh! I heard the Russian bathhouses are a must-go. Come on, Erwin! When in Rome…”

        But no, Nile had not warned him about ending up in the backseat of a taxi with a strange boy in a parka, worrying about how he’d find his way back to his hotel, after gunshots in the Asian massage parlor into which he had been a few minutes of uncertainty from walking.

        They’d left the part of the city from the tour booklets and entered a much more industrial district that reeked of gasoline and burnt rubber and fish.

        Erwin swallowed hard around the knot in his throat, looking over to Eren again.

        “How did you know it was going to happen?” he asked.

        “Just follow my lead,” Eren murmured below his breath, completely avoiding the question.

        “Follow your lead?” Erwin echoed.

        “Shh,” Eren said.

        The taxi stopped at a waterfront warehouse, cast in sharp, alienating shades of gold and yellow by lights across the water. Eren paid the driver and got out. Erwin waited. Eren sighed and ducked down into the backseat, gesturing impatiently for Erwin to follow.

        Clutching his bag to his side, Erwin unfolded himself from the backseat of the taxi, resigning to the fact that maybe he was going to die tonight.

        It was a small comfort but a comfort all the same that the place was not empty by any means. Outside the taxi, the nighttime wind nipped at his ears and his fingertips, and the beat of club music leaked from the smallish warehouse, whining and grinding and throbbing. A small group of people dressed up for a wild night came around the corner of another warehouse, stopped at a door on the loading dock, talked with the bouncer there and were granted access. Eren snatched the guidebook from Erwin’s bag and chucked it into the water.

        “Excuse me?” Erwin sputtered.

        Eren stuck his hand in Erwin’s bag and found his passport, shoved that into his own pocket.

        “What are you doing?” Erwin demanded. Something soft and cool dusted his knuckles; it was Eren, taking his hand.

        He cast Erwin a sharp but reassuring glance over his shoulder and said again, “Follow my lead.”

        The bouncer didn’t have a problem with Eren; neither did he seem to have a problem with Eren holding Erwin’s hand. In fact, it seemed to grant them easier access. The bounce went through Erwin’s bag, of course. That was why Eren didn’t want his passport or the guidebook in there. Throwing the book into the water seemed a little extreme, but at least it made sense now.

        The bouncer waved them in through the dark door. Eren blew him a kiss as they passed, which seemed a little facetious.

        The music was almost deafening inside the warehouse. It took a moment for Erwin’s eyes to adjust, so he just clutched his bag to his side and let Eren in the parka lead him. The smell of gas and fish was gone—now it was just dust, the sweetness of wooden pallets. Layered thickly over that was cigarette smoke, fruity cannabis, incense, the pungent perfume of alcohol.

        Finally around a corner there was light—low, coolly colored lights, and people dancing. People everywhere, though thankfully not quite as many as Erwin had anticipated. A nightclub in a warehouse—how interesting. Along the walls marched pretty quatrefoil chairs and divans, flowers in tall vases, chipped garden statuary of gods and goddesses and abstract art lit from below by little bulbs like ghost story flashlights. It was warm, extremely warm in the warehouse; Erwin stripped off his coat and put it over one arm.

        Eren led the way up a flight of steps that were somewhere between a ladder and actual stairs, to a high upper floor overlooking the dance floor. At the top, he let go of Erwin’s hand.

        The music was not so loud upstairs. This was clearly the VIP area. A strong, broad man in all black stopped to check Eren out. Eren gestured to Erwin. The man tossed dirty blond hair out of his eyes; his nose wrinkled a little not like he was disgusted but like he was a beast sniffing Erwin’s fear in the air. Then he just nodded and shrugged, ushering them on.

        Erwin followed Eren across the upper area to a cluster of chairs and couches in the corner where a few more men in black were sprawled casually but vigilantly. On the low coffee table was an assortment of drinks and glass tumblers, a bucket of ice, a silver tray like in _Downton Abbey_ but instead of tea cups or cucumber sandwiches, it boasted a few lines of white powder.

        On the poshest of the couches was a woman, one arm propped along the back of the cushions in a way that was both domineering yet screamed elegance. Her eyes instantly went to Erwin, and it was like a signal for the others to snap back to alert.

        That was it—approaching this group of people was like approaching a queen. Maybe she was the owner of the club, or the daughter or the girlfriend of the owner. Whatever she was, she was the center of power; that much was obvious even to Erwin.

        The men in black seemed to recognize Eren, but Erwin they looked ready to throw off the balcony to the dance floor.

        Eren reached back and put a hand on Erwin’s chest. “Stay right here,” he said, raising his voice just a little over the music now that down below it had changed to a softer trance track.

        He didn’t have to tell Erwin twice. Erwin was rooted there in shock, suddenly, mouth dry and heart racing because—

        It was the woman he’d seen outside the massage parlor maybe thirty minutes before Eren had stopped him from going inside.

        She was the seeming empress of this place, with her heels off and her legs tucked up neatly to the side, lounging in that tiny red dress. She wasn’t all too well-endowed—not like the sleazy mail order bride or porn advertisements insisted—but she was tight and toned with her dress pressing taut on a lacy bra that pressed tauter on the flesh of her barely-there chest.

        Eren in the parka was on the couch beside her now, talking low and private near her shoulder, looking at her like he was desperate for her to look back but she had her hooded, smoky eyes fixed piercingly on Erwin and they were not moving any time soon. There was something sly about it. She was taking him in, evaluating him.

        Erwin cleared his throat and tried to fix his collar and his hair again.

        The woman turned to Eren, chin inclined so she looked down her nose at him. She murmured back, in his ear, against his temple. He was practically on her lap now. She even had her hand off the couch, swirling her fingernails absently on the back of his neck between his messy dark hair and the fur-lined hood of his parka—then tightening there, like a lioness lifting a cub by the scruff. She leaned away to speak to that man who’d sniffed at Erwin, stretching so that her black velvet choker danced on her throat and the strap of her lacy bra slipped off her shoulder a little.

        The man stood and brought Erwin a drink.

        Erwin tentatively took it, and when he realized everyone watched him because they were waiting for him to drink, he took a long, slow swallow and let it burn all the way down. Straight whiskey, on the rocks. He wasn’t complaining at this point.

        Eren came strutting back over, peeling off his parka and tossing it on an empty seat. He craned on his tiptoes again, saying:

        “This is your alibi. Don’t worry, Captain America, we’ll get you back to your hotel room in an hour or two. Until then, at least pretend to enjoy yourself. Alibis only work if you believe in them.”

        _Captain America_. That made Erwin feel very silly—a little special, but very silly. He was not a superhero.

        Erwin threw back the last of his whiskey and decided he was content with those instructions. A few hours and he’d be back to normal. Wouldn’t _this_ be a story? Yes, this was much more like something Nile would boast about. But this—this was his experience. And Marie didn’t have to know.

        Eren and his friends each did a line or two of the drugs on the table—except the woman (and Erwin, of course). Her eyes would drift out over the club, then slip back to Erwin when Erwin wasn’t expecting them. He wasn’t sure what Eren meant about an alibi, but he was very thankful for the willingness of Eren’s friends to include him for a few hours like he wasn’t some lost businessman.

        Eren danced by himself at the low wall that overlooked the club down below.

        The men in black talked and laughed.

        The woman stood, left her pumps behind and glided her way through the slithering lights. Her head barely grazed Erwin’s shoulder; Erwin didn’t realize he’d backed away against the wall until she was just a few breaths from his chest, looking up at him with a hard glint in her eyes.

        She didn’t say anything, but the look on her face was sultry and demanding—the kind of look Marie had after four glasses of wine. And Erwin was not so remiss or pathetic that he did not recognize it as an invitation as the woman floated past him and went down the stairs to the dance floor.

        Frantically, Erwin searched for somewhere to place his drink.

        Another of the men in black took the empty glass and his coat and shot Erwin a look that Erwin figured was either judgmental or a silent urge to hurry up and follow the woman.

        He got the feeling she didn’t just dance with anyone.

        She was waiting for him at the edge of the crowd, hands propped on her hips. Erwin paused just once approaching her, suddenly terrified and thrilled at once.

        This, he thought, could be the woman with whom he’d have an affair.

        And God, was she beautiful—so mysterious and different, not at all typical like Marie was more and more lately. She rolled her head dreamily, tossed her hair from her eyes, swayed her body slowly and let Erwin put his hands on her hips to follow them. The lights moved over her, highlighting the smooth curves and angles of her arms. Her body was hot against his, her dress riding up until he could almost feel the curve of her ass against his groin as they danced tight together. He’d never danced to this kind of music before, but it made him feel young and carefree again. He felt—not himself.

        That was so, so refreshing.

        Nile was right. He’d needed this.

        This was the woman. He wanted her. Shivers sparked under his skin and lust throbbed its way down his veins. He was so sensitive lately, as sensitive and sexually vulnerable as he had been years and years ago as a stupid kid. He didn’t know this woman, which was perfect; she was confident and elegant and clearly protected, which made him feel less guilty. He actually felt a little kinky and shockingly bold, out of control in a passionate way, longing to know how tight and hot she’d be on the inside, in his arms, under his mouth—

        Erwin nosed closer to the woman’s ear. He begged in Russian the best he could remember, “What is your name?”

        She didn’t answer.

        “Come back to my hotel with me?” he asked next, politely, in English.

        She smirked like a man.

        They staggered back together against a wall away from the crowd, where her arms were around his waist and her chin to his chest, her sharp eyes digging into him impatiently like a wolf hunting easy prey. Her eyes said, _Kiss me if you’re going to kiss me_. And the hard heat of her body was so full of power, of danger, of mystery—

        So he kissed her.

        She let him. Her pouty mouth tasted like metal and vodka. He didn’t even care if her lipstick smeared on his face. He was afraid to touch her too much, she was so perfect.

        Up on the balcony, Eren out of the parka had stopped dancing and watched with narrowed eyes.

        Suddenly—the dancing and the kissing was done. She pulled away from him. She didn’t seem to care if Erwin followed or not as she moved back upstairs, but she looked satisfied. And Erwin felt cold.

###

“Will she be there all night?”

        Eren cut Erwin a jagged look in the back of another taxi, and Erwin wondered if it had been a bad question to ask. But he was warm from the whiskey, from the dancing, and he was on the way back to his hotel and back to himself. He could still see the woman, watching like some ancient goddess from the upper floor as they’d left, legs crossed at the ankle, slender and elegant and terrifying and beautiful.

        “What?” Eren laughed. “You want her?” He sighed. “If that’s what you’re into, I guess…”

        Erwin frowned at him, though Eren had tossed his gaze out the open car window, chin propped in hand and knee bouncing to the late night Russian radio. Was he offended? That wasn’t very fair. Unless the woman was off limits, but that wouldn’t make any sense. She’d wanted to dance with him. He’d missed this—excitement, mystery, desire, self-surety. It felt like forever since he’d had that, since the first few months of his and Marie’s relationship. Almost felt like he’d never had it at all.

        “What’s her name?” Erwin asked.

        “Petra,” Eren whispered. “She goes by Petra.”

        “That’s a beautiful name.”

        “Uh huh.” Eren clucked his tongue. “She’s not exactly who you think she is.”

        “Thank you for your help,” Erwin said, getting out at his hotel.

        Eren got out, too.

        “Really, I appreciate it,” Erwin added. “ _Spasibo_.”

        Eren followed him into the lobby of the hotel.

        “What’s the matter?” Erwin asked, smiling uncertainly.

        “It’s your turn to help me,” Eren explained, and winked at the front desk as he tailed Erwin past it to the fine, brightly-lit elevators.

        Erwin cleared his throat. “Okay,” was all he could think to say.

        Eren rocked on his heels and sang softly under a sigh as the elevator went up, the two of them on opposite sides of the car. “ _Aye, lyuli, lyuli_ …”

        A sharp, new sort of nervousness descended on Erwin as he made his way to his room. Something didn’t feel right. _Your turn to help._ He wanted the night’s adventures to be over. He didn’t want any more trouble. Story, acquired. Experience, done. He was a little afraid of what Eren wanted—to rob him, maybe. To demand recompense.

        _Alibi. Save your life._

        Eren shrugged off his parka and draped it on the desk chair in Erwin’s executive suite. He lit a cigarette, to Erwin’s brief chagrin, and walked back and forth around the large hotel room like he wanted to memorize every detail about it from the feel of the carpet under his toes to the engraving in the light switch plates. He really was sort of tiny, but not scrawny; just small and lean, fragile with the kind of lingering youthfulness reserved for someone who’d already seen it all or someone who’d seen nothing.

        Erwin sat stiffly in the wingback armchair near the window, which actually had a stunning near-panoramic view of the city. His eyes followed Eren. Maybe—if he asked nicely—maybe Eren would explain what had actually happened. Or just leave or something. The tension was coming back; he was all nerves again. Finally he said, “My name is Erwin, by the way.”

        Eren nodded. “ _Priyatno_.”

        “What?” Erwin didn’t wait to know. “Well?”

        Eren stopped short and looked very puzzled. “‘Well’ what?”

        Erwin swallowed hard. “What was all that tonight?”

        Eren shrugged. “Marco’s been meaning to take out the bitches who run that spa for a while now.”

        “Marco?”

        “He works for Pixis.”

        “I’m sorry? Who is Pixis?”

        “Pixis is the big guy. My boss.”

        “And you’re Eren and you and…Marco? Work for Pixis.”

        Eren paced. “Yes. But Marco sent Jean to do the hit. And I would have felt very bad if you disappeared because you were at the wrong place, wrong time.”

        Erwin cleared his throat and crossed one leg over the other, touching his chin in thought. He chuckled, though nothing felt funny about this. Gunshots. Warehouse. Alibi. Drugs. Big Guy. Disappeared. Hit.

        Ah.

        Erwin smiled, eyes wide. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but are you in a _gang_? Is this the mafia?”

        Eren stopped pacing again and stared at Erwin with his half-smoked cigarette forgotten on his lower lip. The ash was ready to fall at the slightest twitch. Maybe the extent of his rather expansive English tongue stopped just short of _gang_ or _mafia_. Maybe it was a term that did not jump languages smoothly. Maybe—

        “Mm-hmm.” Eren nodded not like he agreed but like he’d heard this tune sung before. “No, I am just a Russian.”

        Erwin smiled chipperly and leaned back in the chair. He nodded. He stroked his hand down the side of his face, raising his brows. “Ah!” was all he could say. “Ah, I see! Okay. The Russian mafia. You’re gangsters.”

        Eren smiled back, quizzically. “ _My brat’ya_.”

        _The Russian mafia_.

        Erwin felt like his face was broken. He did not think this was a time to be smiling so stupidly. He cleared his throat, fingers clammy. “Should you really have just told me all these things, then? About—Marco and—Pixis?”

        “Probably not,” Eren retorted without a second thought. He kicked at the foot of the queen-sized bed and searched for a place to deposit his cigarette ash. He settled for an empty glass from near the complimentary Perrier water. He offered Erwin his cigarette for a drag or two. “But you know, I’m bored of them. I don’t care.”

        Wonderful. That was wonderful; Eren was good to be aware of his own boundaries. But maybe someone had forgotten to tell him the part where involving innocent civilians was perhaps not so good.

        “But _what happened_?” Erwin asked again, taking three drags—three, in a row—before passing the almost-gone cigarette back. His eyes were wide. He felt like someone was holding them that wide open. The cigarette made him very dizzy. “Did someone die at that massage parlor?” he croaked.

        Eren uttered a thoughtful hum, standing before Erwin with a hip cocked to one side. Cigarette smoke curled up like ribbons around him. “Yes,” he finally said. “Pixis is doing some compartmentalizing of competition.”

        “Hmm.” Erwin smiled behind his hand, nodding along. He could still smell Petra from the warehouse on his knuckles. “And by me disappearing, you mean I’ll be sleeping with the fishes.”

        “Huh?” Eren’s face dimpled.

        Erwin cleared his throat. “They want to dispose of me because I’m a witness.”

        “Yup.” Eren finished the cigarette. He took off his pullover sweater, white T-shirt beneath and a few tattoos on his inner arms and wrists—something like a scar on his throat, not far from the dip of his collarbone. He wandered around the room again, turned on the television. It was the news. Rapid-fire Russian became background buzz. Eren stood watching it with distant eyes, his arms crossed, his toes curling and uncurling absently, weight centered at that one cocked hip again.

        Finally, Erwin found his voice. “Is there anything on there about the spa?”

        “No.”

        _Your turn to help…_ Erwin cleared his throat. Just as he’d dreaded, it was worse than it had seemed. He’d seen enough movies and crime dramas to know it was not a fortuitous thing, to owe a professional criminal. Of course, it was just his luck to get caught in a mess like this. To borrow a phrase from Nile—he was royally fucked, wasn’t he?

        “So what do I owe you? Do you need money? I can give you money—anything, I’m glad to… You know, I’m just here for a business conference and an affair—”

        “I don’t need money.” Eren snorted. Flopping down to curl up on the Ralph Lauren bedspread of the big bed, he looked suddenly young and defenseless again. Maybe it was an act, though. No—something about this Eren gangster was painfully genuine, and Erwin was still very in disbelief that any of this was real. He felt detached from himself, like he was watching from the sidelines, waiting to be tagged in again.

        “I need help,” Eren confirmed.

        “How can I help you?”

        “I’m trying to leave.”

        “I can walk you out—”

        “No,” Eren said, politely. His mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile, like Erwin had made a joke. Erwin’s stomach sank—very well felt as if it bottomed out. That smile didn’t give him a very good feeling. Still he smiled back, trying to remain hopeful that somehow by tomorrow morning, everything would be back to normal. Just a man in St Petersburg for a work conference and an affair who would return home safely and with quite the cocktail anecdote.

        Eren drew a breath and said, “I need your help leaving the Brotherhood.”

 

**END CH. I**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translations.** please forgive me for sucking. 
> 
> *** spasibo:** спасибо, _thank you_.  
>  *** ne znayu, gde ya idu:** не знаю, где я иду, erwin's poor attempt to say _i don't know where i’m going_  
>  *** ne pravil’no:** не правильно, _not correct_ , followed by eren's correction of erwin's grammar  
>  *** aye, lyuli, lyuli…:** ай, люли люли… lyrics from _kalinka_ , listen to red army choir version!  
>  *** priyatno:** приятно, from очень приятно, _nice to meet you_  
>  *** my brat’ya:** мы братья, _we're brothers_ (i think)


	2. He Saw Something and They Know He Saw Something

**{kamennoostrovsky prospekt, st petersburg, russia | wednesday night, 2 hours before the hit.}**

Eren had been in a trendy part of the city, some classy digs right off Kamennoostrovsky with its own private lift entrance from the street.

        It was a beautifully renovated apartment, complete with a spiral iron-wrought staircase and sets of half-moon windows taller than he was, overlooking Avstriyskaya Square. The place had to have been at least a million euros and he’d basked in the spill of streetlamps through long half-lattice light windows, under a ceiling lamp modeled after medieval iron lanterns.

        In the blue-tiled kitchen were tumblers he imagined he’d use when he wanted to get laid and wine glasses for when he hosted dinner to impress the neighbors he imagined he’d judge in privacy. _That Likhachyov fellow… Marina is only concerned about money…_ He’d work a normal job, maybe at a flower shop or something, and Armin would stop saying he wanted to move to Paris and they’d blow cigarette out the loft casement window and spend hours christening each room for New Year’s, talk about how far they’d made it since childhood, since the old gray apartments and selling fleas to vengeful neighbors, since Armin hacking buildings like others now hacked computers, since Eren fucked men blind and robbed men blind and scratched at his wrists and his bruised knees waiting for his powder reward. And Levi could come over, too, he could have his own room. He could come and go as he pleased, Hanji could play cook like she liked to in this great kitchen, Mikasa would want to move in and Jean could sleep on the couch when he fought with Marco—

        Distracted, Eren tripped over the actual owner of the flat—a dark-haired, olive-skinned man who’d been dead for about seven minutes already, piled gracelessly on the kitchen floor. Blood had splattered back across the island counter and caked in the man’s sweater like rust, pooled from the hole in his neck quietly, smoothly, like a libation offering.

        Eren couldn’t remember the man’s name—ah, yeah, Yurii Alexopoulus, a slick Greek self-built businessman who also happened to be the longtime secret lover of some Minister’s wife. Well, he _had been_. The Chairman paid Pixis for his head, and Pixis only ever took external hit jobs for a pretty price. The Chairman said he’d make sure law enforcement didn’t ask too many questions, too.

        Once, Eren had met a Dutch man who studied Eastern Europe, and over a few beers the Dutch man had said, “It’s remarkable to me how this great place has never had rule of law.”

        “What does that mean?” Eren had asked.

        “It means that there are rules, but no one ever follows them and no one ever stops anyone from not following them. Take the Bratva, for instance—the mafia is so sophisticated, so deeply integrated into the sociopolitical landscape here, it practically controls three-quarters of the country and is hardly consigned to one corner of society or the other—it’s part of Russia’s core—”

        It had made a little bit of sense. Brothers had always been there, everywhere, and without Brothers the whole world would come apart at the seams.

        But Eren had just been working distraction that night so he hadn’t argued that there _were_ rules that were followed, at least for him. Rules like don’t fuck with Pixis, don’t bust a deal, don’t leave a trail, your debt is never paid.

        Outside the building, Eren flipped up the hood of his parka, the rush of cars in the square tossing his hair in and out of his eyes.

        In his pocket, his burner phone started to buzz.

        Turning from Avstriyskaya onto Mira Street, he flipped it open and tucked it between shoulder and ear. “Yeah?” he greeted.

        “Where the fuck are you?” Jean demanded. “We’re leaving the house.”

        “I had a date,” Eren snapped, skirting around a group of people on their way to a nearby bar.

        “Your dates always run over,” Jean grumbled, echoing the code word. He knew it meant a hit. Eren could hear rustling in the background—distant, tinny voices. One of them was Marco.

        “You better be there in an hour,” Jean muttered.

        “I will be,” Eren replied merrily.

        He hung up and turned down the right street to the popular little restaurant Barvinok. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten dinner yet.

###

**{the warehouse | wednesday night, 37 minutes after the hit.}**

The dance music in the warehouse was like the very pulse of the world herself, throbbing up his spine. Eren wanted to move to it, let it move him. He wanted to fuck to it against the wall in the shadows. It was that kind of music, yes—awakened the mindless nature of man.

        But as it was, Eren had a very unfortunate accidental witness in tow, and everyone was giving him dirty looks like they wanted him to know they could tell Shadis about his presence on his turf the second Petra told them to tell Shadis about his presence on his turf. But Petra wasn’t going to do that, because Petra was Levi and Levi’s eyes followed Eren across the club loft, silvery and demanding through the rippling lights.

        Eren sank down next to him on the sofa and leaned close enough to drown in that sweet, expensive double agent perfume. Erwin the American fidgeted uncomfortably where he’d left him, but he had nothing to worry about. Eren’s heart was racing and he was sort of playing things by ear, but—nothing to worry about.

        “Evening, _dorogaya_ ,” he said, brushing a tiny kiss along Levi’s bare shoulder. “Are you tucking or are you packing tonight?” He bit his tongue between his teeth to keep his nervous grin from dissolving into nervous laughter. It always made him nervous to see Levi in drag—mainly because Levi in drag worked for the rivals. But also a little bit because it fascinated him in a very unexplainable way.

        Levi’s jaw tightened; his eyes flashed over Eren and he leaned very close to hiss, “Fuck you, _myshka_ , I swear to God, the day you blow my cover is the day I kill you—what the _fuck_ are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here.”

        Eren’s smile went out like a light and he mustered as grim a look as he could manage. “I need help,” he half-mouthed, half-whispered.

        Eren thought he’d gotten all of Levi’s most vicious glances—but apparently he was wrong, because this was one of the most brutal. The smoky eyeliner and shadow made it all the worse. It was like in his mind Levi was already kicking Eren’s ribs out through his nose with a steel-toed boot, one by one like broken wishbones.

        “What did you do?” he asked through his teeth. “I heard you weren’t with Jean—”

        Eren sighed. He had been part of the plan and without him, Jean had had to improvise. Jean didn’t like being forced to improvise, so it was no surprise Levi had already heard about it, even while being selective with communication when working as Petra. Eren shrugged. He tipped his chin towards Erwin the American.

        He said, “He saw something and they know he saw something.”

        Levi’s face tightened in a rather unladylike frown. “So you brought him _here_? Of all places? I keep telling myself every time, you can’t make a stupider decision, but then you go and do just that—”

        Eren sighed sharply and murmured, “Sometimes we all want to do good things again, you know. I’m just trying to get him an alibi. You’ll help me, right?” He waited for Levi to look him in the eye again. “It would help _your_ collection of alibis, too, wouldn’t it?”

        Levi’s eyes flashed back over him. Eren knew he couldn’t deny that. Levi drew a slow breath through his nose, casting his gaze over to Erwin the American. He was thinking, Eren knew—measuring the situation, playing chess in his mind, imagining all possible mistakes or loopholes or consequences—going over all possible angles. He had to. It was what a double agent did: know everything.

        It was only a tiny bit difficult to ignore that it was with the same rare heat in his eyes he usually reserved for Eren, as he tossed fake hair out of his way and muttered, “Fine. He’ll have a damn good alibi.”

###

**{executive suite, moika street hotel | wednesday night, after the warehouse.}**

“I need your help leaving the Brotherhood,” Eren said, stretching like a cat on the hotel bed.

        Erwin nodded. “Sure,” he replied calmly.

        “Great.” Eren offered his most charming smile.

        “Of course,” Erwin said, smiling back. He got up and walked over to the phone on the desk, nodding to himself. He flipped through a few laminated pages of the hotel guide then lifted the phone and started dialing.

        Eren raised his brows. “Who are you calling?”

        “The police,” Erwin said, still smiling politely at Eren over his shoulder. “They’ll be able to help both of us, I’m sure.”

        Eren almost choked on a breath, the words ripping from his mouth as he practically fell off the bed. “ _Suka—_ fuck! _Nyet, nyet, nyet—bozhi moi, pizdyets!_ ”

        Eren threw himself between Erwin and the desk—he took a few bumps against the furniture and Erwin’s elbows, but he made it, jammed two fingers down on the switchhook to end the call and with his free hand grabbed Erwin the American’s dick through fine probably outrageously expensive slacks.

        Erwin uttered a disgruntled sound and almost dropped the telephone receiver.

        Eyes wide and wild, Eren sought out Erwin’s dark blue stare and hissed viciously through his teeth, “No police!”

        Erwin gawked down at him in mute wonder, frozen like Eren had a gun to his side or something even though Eren just had a hand gripped securely on his cock to distract him from his previous plans.

        Eren laughed cautiously and tried to seem less threatening, mustering the softest, most seductive air he could manage on such short notice. Usually he had more than seconds to get into sex mode, but this called for drastic measures. His eyes cut down, caught on the glint of Erwin’s wedding ring—right.

        He let his knees tangle with Erwin’s, loosened his grip between his thighs a little, arched his back gently so it was a bit more intimate and provocative as he leaned up and reminded, “You said you wanted to have an affair, Captain America? You’re in luck, that’s my line of business.”

        Erwin was clearly overwhelmed. Eren hadn’t known a grown man could blush so furiously. He stumbled over a few different words, caught in place, his hands up and the dial tone from the dead phone call droning out of the receiver still hanging between them.

        “Yes,” Erwin finally choked out, ashamed. “And you’re not unattractive, you know, in fact, you are very cute and a little frightening and I never thought I’d question my sexuality so fast, but I—I mean, you’re touching me, so—yes, I’m trying to have an affair but I’m not looking for a prostitute, per se—well, I guess I was, but—I thought you were just going to rob me, you know—”

        Eren reared back a little, pouting. “No, I just need an alibi, too.”

        “I thought we had an alibi! With—the woman, Petra?”

        Something in Eren’s chest pinched sharply at that, but he brushed it aside. “Fuck Petra,” he snarled. Erwin uttered a breathy little grunt and Eren realized he’d tightened his grip on his dick again in anger. “Oh, sorry.”

        Erwin chuckled warily, blinked a few times, smiled tense and uncomfortable. “So are you or are you not a prostitute?”

        “I used to be a prostitute.”

        “Were you a mafia prostitute or just a regular prostitute?”

        Eren’s brow knotted. “A regular…? What’s the difference?”

        “Now you work for the mafia.”

        “Yes. Well, no. You’re helping me with that part.”

        “Yes, of course, I owe you. But how is having sex with me an alibi?”

        “Because they’ll believe it.” Eren heaved a sigh, letting go of Erwin’s cock but not wanting to release him completely; he fiddled with Erwin’s belt, started undoing it as he frowned up at him without lifting his head. Men usually liked that. He was lucky, very lucky. It was painfully obvious Erwin had never been with a man before and there were two types of men who’d never been with men before—those who violently resisted, and those shocked by their own interest. Erwin seemed to be one of the latter few, weak in the knees and easy to manipulate. Thank _God_.

        “Listen,” Eren mumbled, fingers crawling across the front of Erwin’s boxer briefs. Erwin wasn’t all that bad-looking, honestly, and in the pants he was pretty impressive—maybe responding a little too fast to a touch to which he professed he was not inclined. Holding Erwin’s stare and flipping his inner businessman switch, he murmured tenderly, “I was supposed to help Jean with that job tonight, but I was late. Then I saw you and—well, now here we are. Helping you only looks worse for me if they know the truth, but if they think I just got distracted fucking around, they’ll get off my case which means they’ll also get off your case if they _did_ see you.”

        Panic stamped itself across Erwin’s face again.

        “Which they probably didn’t,” Eren hurried to add with a bright smile, though he couldn’t exactly promise it was true. Erwin didn’t need to know that.  

        The horrified light in Erwin’s eyes said he didn’t really get the logic. That didn’t matter; what mattered was that it all made sense to Eren and Erwin was getting hard.

        “Clearly,” Eren purred, “you’re very sexually frustrated, but I can take care of that for you, okay? It works out for both of us. You want to have an affair, we’re in a sticky situation, I know you were very interested in L—Petra but you’ll probably never see her again, so…”

        “What will they do?” Erwin husked. “If you go back? Will you be in trouble?”

        Eren snorted. “Yeah, duh,” he said. “No one just ditches a job. But it’s not like I’ve never had a cracked rib before.”

        It would work. Levi had already seen him with Erwin. If anyone suspected his almost sabotage at the massage parlor, if anyone wondered where he’d gone without notice, he could just say he was playing with an American tourist and forgot to phone home—and if anyone was after Mr. Erwin, Levi would vouch for his presence anywhere _but_ the massage parlor. The rest Eren would figure out later. For now, he had Erwin convinced he was in debt to him, and debt was a very dangerous thing.

        Suddenly, the tension in Erwin’s body released. A dazed look drifted over him. Eren resumed coaxing him slowly through his shorts, but Erwin just reached down and gently pulled him by the wrists out of his pants. He murmured, “Okay,” and then, to himself, he said it again, “Well, okay.” He raked a hand through his fine blond hair and wandered over to sit on the bed with his pants still undone.

        “All right,” Eren echoed triumphantly, crossing through the slant of light from the room’s low lamp to crouch down at Erwin’s feet and run his hands up his thighs, go for his fly again, a nice blow job might suffice to get the guy going and just wait until Levi heard about this once Eren got out of the country, phoned him from Paris or something, Levi would beg him to come back—

        Erwin stopped him with two hands on his shoulders before Eren could even get past his knees. He grunted, having not expected the barricade.

        “Okay,” Erwin said a third time, nodding decisively. “I’m sorry—Eren, right? I don’t think I can sleep with you, but we can pretend we did. Right? Just stay here in my room for the next few days. Like you said, they won’t be looking for me, so if they aren’t looking for me, they won’t find you. Problem solved.”

        Eren scoffed, a little offended his usual scheme was not working. He lurched backwards and just sat at Erwin’s feet, squinting at him bitterly—but then he decided it was worth a shot.

        “Okay,” Eren complied. “That sounds like a plan.”

###

Eren fell asleep, curled up on one side of the huge bed.

        Erwin was exhausted but the idea of sleeping, unguarded and confused, was laughable. He didn’t want to sleep because he didn’t want to know what morning brought. In the shower, taking care of the erection Eren the Russian mafia maybe-prostitute had started and pretending he hadn’t been so reluctant to stop it midway, he thought maybe he could just wake early, leave Eren in the room, switch hotels, and go about his business trip without looking back. He could swing that.

        But he wasn’t that kind of person. That felt extraordinarily dirty, and very unkind. If Eren trusted him enough to sleep in the company of a stranger, Erwin could trust him enough not to kill him in his sleep. He hoped.

        Looking at him as he slept, Erwin thought that Eren was, all things considered, a very good person for trying to help him, for trying to leave the mafia. Maybe being a good person was dependent on a lot of complicated factors and not just actions or reactions. Erwin hoped for the best for Eren. Eren seemed to be going through a very early-life crisis.

        The least Erwin could do was to help Eren get out of his gang’s sight. Right?

        In just a bath towel, Erwin went over to Eren’s parka. In the pockets he found a lighter and a beat-up pack of cigarettes, some Russian gum that looked like Juicy Fruit, a tiny baggie of white powder, a flip cell phone with many missed calls, a gun with a silencer.

        Erwin had only ever touched a gun once in his life, his cousin’s gun. His cousin was a police officer. This gun was different, and yet easier to hold.

        Erwin tucked it under his pillow just in case he might have misgauged Eren’s goodness somewhere along the way, and he fell asleep thinking about Petra, the woman at the warehouse.

###

**{moika street hotel, st petersburg | thursday early afternoon.}**

Voices. Someone was talking. Someone else talked over them. Fast, clipped words, a bubbling brook of syllables. Had Marie left on the early-morning soaps again? Erwin’s neck hurt. There was something hard under his pillow and it was too big to be his phone.

        Oh God, the conference!

        Erwin grabbed for the digital clock to check the time; his Blackberry was somewhere in his coat pocket from last night. It was after three p.m.

        Erwin didn’t pay much mind to the small crowd gathered in the executive suite until he was halfway into his good pants, belt chattering at his hips. The voices stopped and the sound of a metal hammer cocking snapped swiftly through the silence.

        Eren and three people Erwin had never seen before stared at him from across the hotel room. Two men, one woman. She was taller and more firmly statured than the woman at the club last night, with an arm outstretched and a gun trained on Erwin, sloppy ponytail and a look in her eye like nothing scared her. One of the men was a tiny blond with his hair pulled out of his face in a loose halfback, blue eyes stormy but intensely focused. The other man, the one with a tousled ash blond almost-undercut, had Eren in a headlock.

        Erwin pulled his pants up all the way and stared back.

        “Did you sleep well?” the woman chirped, rich rolling heavily accented but perfectly formed English.

        Eren paused his wrestling against the headlock and with not much urgency in his voice greeted, “Hey, good morning, _dorogoi_ , meet Hanji, Armin, and Jean. They’re here to get me.”

 

**END CH. II**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translations.** please forgive me for sucking.
> 
>  *** dorogaya/dorogoi** : дорогая, дорогой, _precious, darling_ (f./m.)  
>  *** suka:** сука, ‘generic’ interjection curse?? _bitch (sp.)/shit/damn_.  
>  *** nyet:** нет, _no_  
>  *** bozhi moi:** боже мой, _oh my god_  
>  *** pizdyets:** пиздец, _holy shit_  
>  *** bratva:** братва, slang for _brotherhood_ (specifically mafia), colloquially _friends, pals_
> 
>  *** barvinok:** http://a-a-ah.com/barvinok


	3. Enter Lyovushka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanji and co, the Oprosniki, show up to get Eren back before Pixis finds out he's slipped off again—so with Erwin in tow, Eren seeks out Levi, the clean-up guy, the lone wolf. “I need your help getting him out of here safe. It’s my fault he’s in the middle of this, because I tried to do something nice. Why is it so hard to do nice things?” “Because,” Levi says, “we’re not nice people.” But Levi will help. He will help onsome conditions—and one of them is that Erwin and Eren help him work a job.

**{executive suite, moika street hotel, st petersburg, russia | thursday early afternoon.}**

Erwin swallowed hard and decided it was not so bad that the moment of his death would be this, abroad, three in the afternoon and only half-dressed, standing frozen with fear beside his executive suite bed gawking at four mafia members. Now he really wished he’d slept with Eren the maybe prostitute so when Nile read the news report about his death, they would at least say he’d successfully squeezed an affair in there, too.

        Eren wrestled with his captor, which was stressful to watch considering they were similar in size and it meant a real struggle on both ends. “ _Hanji_ ,” he snapped, followed by rapid Russian. The woman snapped back, rolling her eyes and shrugging her shoulders and aiming at Erwin’s head and then his foot and then his gut. Eren spit something curt and harsh at her.

        She sighed. “Hello, nice to meet you,” she droned, raising her brows at Erwin.

        “ _Zdrastvyte_ ,” Erwin replied politely in greeting. Moving very slowly, he finished putting on his pants.

        Before he could fasten his belt, Hanji fired a warning shot that ripped right past him and into the armchair under the window. Eren howled something angry but helpless over the crack of sound. Oh, so that long mosquito-like nose coming off the barrel really _did_ silence a gunshot pretty well, didn’t it!

        Chaos broke out again. Now that he was awake, Erwin was forced to join the party.

        “Who are you?” demanded Hanji as she began to move around the room like a wolf stalking its prey. “What do you know?”

        “I don’t know anything, I swear!” Erwin cried, and he moved opposite Hanji with his hands in the air, climbing up onto the wide bed and standing there in terror.

        Eren and his headlock buddy argued fiercely outside of English again.

        “No one can pull the wool over the eyes of Hanji Zo’evna Zoe!” Hanji bellowed.

        Erwin stopped and dropped his hands. “Is that really your name?”

        “Ugh!” Eren groaned, like this was all very annoying and not at all dangerous.

        “No one scoffs at the name of Hanji Zo’evna Zoe!” Hanji roared, and fired her gun again. Erwin felt the bullet slice the air beside him. The bulb in the bedside lamp exploded with a rain of glass. Crystalline adrenaline sank its claws deeper into Erwin’s nerves.

        “Hanji!” Eren growled, writhing and elbowing still. “He’ll kill you! He’s dangerous! He’s with _Kenny_ —he might even have this room bugged—”

        It took Erwin a moment, but then it clicked to him that Eren spoke in English now specifically so Erwin could understand what he said. He didn’t plan on killing Hanji. He did not believe he was dangerous. He had no idea who Kenny was. But Eren was impromptu _bluffing_.

        “Let me go, Jean—” Eren growled. “I swear to God, I’ll bite you!”

        “Try it and I’ll kick your ass,” hissed Jean, the man holding Eren.

        “If you hurt him, Levi will make you pay for it,” said the compact little blond one. The look on Jean’s face changed like this was definitely a hitch in his plans.

        Erwin had never been very athletic, enough to play some sports when he was younger though not enough to matter to the American sports system, but he did go for daily morning runs and adrenaline could work wonders in any individual. As the smaller blond started to rip through dresser drawers looking for a hidden microphone, Erwin dodged off the bed and back behind the armchair with a newfound agility. The perfume of gunpowder was somehow a little nostalgic. It smelled like fireworks like it had sounded like fireworks last night. When were the police going to arrive? Did the police even arrive for gang fights?

        Hanji did not move, but followed Erwin with her gun.

        “Armin, call Hanji off—” Eren snarled.

        The tiny blond, Armin, looked unsure but not convinced.

        Eren groaned, “This man is not to be messed with! He knows things about Pixis that will destroy us all! _Tseplyat po oseni schitayut_ , okay?”

        Erwin did all he could really think to do with Eren’s help. He stooped down behind the armchair and heaved with all his might, throwing it forward at Hanji. It was somewhat successful; it hit Hanji, who cried out and dropped her gun.

        Erwin ran for the queen-sized bed again while they all shouted at each other in Russian. Eren’s gun was still under the pillow. Erwin grabbed it. He aimed for Hanji and pulled back the hammer with shaking thumbs. The ruckus attenuated to a ringing pause, and Erwin realized that Eren’s lies had really had some effect on his accomplices. They were a little afraid of Erwin. Erwin laughed. He felt bug-eyed.

        “You all need to get the hell out of this hotel and never look for either of us again,” he blurted.

        Eren’s face screwed up. He wasn’t even struggling anymore, just sort of leaning back on the Jean fellow as if they were one of those couples who felt the need to cuddle in public. Eren looked very insulted Erwin had gotten ahold of his gun somehow. He looked like he wanted to say, _Shut up, I can handle this_.

        But then some new scheme seemed to dawn on him and he said, “You guys, you caught me, this is a side job, okay? I’m taking a side job. I’ll be home by Monday. Can you just go now? You’re embarrassing me, you’re all embarrassing.”

        Armin, Jean, and Hanji exchanged doubtful looks.

        And between the gunshots last night, dancing at the warehouse, the gunshots now—something clicked inside Erwin.

        “Yes,” he lied, trying to sound like any actor in any crime drama or action movie he’d ever seen. “I know, it’s surprising. He came to me about it. We wanted to keep it a secret. We planned on splitting it so we both benefitted. Buy some nice Christmas presents this year.”

        “New Year’s,” Eren interjected. His friends’ eyes volleyed over to him and back to Erwin.

        Erwin swallowed, shrugged, shook his head. “But—um—maybe, I mean, if you don’t leave us alone—you know, a _certain someone_ will have something interesting to say about it. But he doesn’t have to find out, if you get what I mean.”

        Who was this man speaking? Surely it wasn’t Erwin Smith, in town representing Langdon and Lawrence interior design and architecture for a work conference. This was some other person. Yes, Erwin had seen a movie like this once. _Fight Club_. He was not half as crazed as that, but he did think some elements of this moment were familiar.

        But what the fuck was supposed to happen after all of this? Would he have to go home into a witness protection program? Would he go home at all? Would he have to change his name and start a new life in Europe with Eren the ex-whore Russian thug? Had anything he’d said made sense at all to these men, or was it a painfully obvious lie?

        “See?” Eren scoffed. “Nothing to worry about. I can handle myself. And now you’ve all ruined the surprise.”

        “ _Pochemu govorim po-angliiskii_?” the tiny blond one spat.

        “Uh,” Erwin said back.

        “Hmm,” Eren replied at the same time, raising his brows and pressing his mouth into a thoughtful almost-smile that would have been funny on a sitcom except this was definitely not that.

        Jean, the ash blond man restraining Eren, perked up suddenly. “ _You_ ,” he said to Erwin, lip curling. “I saw you last night at that fucking spa!”

        It was Eren’s turn to say, “Uh.”

        Erwin nodded and shrugged at the same time, fingers aching from clutching Eren’s gun so tightly.

        “ _Oye_ ,” Armin the blond muttered flatly, like this was some minor inconvenience. He was the sharpest of them all, clearly. Unafraid of the gun in Erwin’s hand, he stormed around the executive suite, ripping through all of Erwin’s things. Not that it was hard; Erwin hadn’t really unpacked. It occurred to him that now Armin was looking for more than a wire, maybe his passport, which happened to still be in Eren’s coat pocket.

        “Why the fuck was he there, eh, Eren?” Jean growled. “Explain that, huh?”

        “I already explained it to you, fucking _loshad’_ —”

        Erwin panicked. He squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger. The kick from the gun sent him staggering back against the wall and head board of the bed. He heard a terrible _crunch_ and the hissing of sparks. Maybe he’d shot the fine executive suite television. Oh God, what was he going to tell the hotel staff?

        Everyone shouted in Russian except Hanji.

        “ _No one shoots at Hanji Zo’evna Zoe!_ ”

        Erwin jumped off the bed and bolted for the suite door.

        Housekeeping at the end of the hall watched in knowing horror, like gunshots in a hotel were not all too inexplicable but still alarming. Panicked breaths ripped from Erwin’s chest; fuck the elevator. He burst through the stairs door and skidded at the rail. He had fourteen flights to pound down—

        A fierce little grip snagged his shoulder.

        Erwin spun, fully prepared to meet his fate at the kiss of a silenced gun.

        It was just Eren, disheveled, lip split, eyes wild and apologetic like he knew this was all his fault. _Good_. It was his fault. Oh, he’d thought to grab his coat. What a pro.

        Eren hissed, “Up to the roof—”

        It was only a few flights up to the roof access, but they wouldn’t make it. The door to the fourteenth floor kicked open as they skidded onto the sixteenth’s landing, succeeded by a stampede of footsteps. Eren grabbed a fistful of Erwin’s shirt hard enough to scrape him with his nails through the cotton, dragging him into the sixteenth floor hall.

        “ _Tak_ ,” Eren sputtered nervously, looking around for escape or hiding, Erwin hoped. “ _Tak, tak, tak_ —”

        “Fuck!” Erwin choked out, because otherwise it felt rather anticlimactic. “Do they know where we are?” he cried. “Did they see us?”

        Eren didn’t answer. He dodged into a room in the middle of housekeeping and went straight for the wardrobe, crying, “ _Otlichno!_ ”

        The housekeeping maid gawked from the bathroom as Eren ushered Erwin into the wardrobe. It was cramped; there was no way they’d both fit. The hangers clattered and the clothes rack dug into his shoulder. Eren whispered something to the maid, gestured down the hall, then squeezed into the wardrobe with Erwin, which meant Erwin propped back against the wall at an odd angle and Eren practically sitting in his lap, tangled so tight that Eren’s hip bones dug into his thigh. Erwin closed his eyes and pleaded his body not to respond to Eren’s closeness just because it was, dear God, the closeness of someone’s body.

        All right, so maybe this whole affair business had a much larger issue at its root than he’d thought.

        Eren pulled the sliding wardrobe door shut and clamped a hand over Erwin’s mouth, not that he really needed to do so. He whispered, voice hot and quivering on Erwin’s throat, “Don’t worry.”

        Erwin found it impossible not to worry.

        He didn’t even have shoes on. His coat was still in the room, as was his wallet. Eren panted hard against him, pounding hearts in competition. He hadn’t even gotten to shave, or put on deodorant. He was sure on his Blackberry he had missed calls from work, from the conference. All he’d wanted was to have an affair and now he was hiding in a wardrobe from the Russian mafia with a maybe prostitute who was trying to defect.

        Voices.

        Eren’s friends were in the hall. They were talking to the maid. The maid said something, voice quavering. The gangsters said something. It was stuffy and hard to breathe in the wardrobe. It was a sweaty eternity until the voices drifted away, the heavy footsteps receded.

        Eren turned his head and half-mouthed, half-whispered on Erwin’s Adam’s apple, “She told them we slipped downstairs again.”

        “Oh,” Erwin whispered back, but not to Eren. Voice almost stuck in his throat, he wiggled one arm up with a delicate clatter of gun metal and said, “I didn’t even realize I brought this with me.”

        “ _Dorogoi!_ ” Eren gasped lovingly, taking his gun and checking the magazine, which meant a few elbows in Erwin’s ribs and lower abdomen.

        Erwin did not think taking the elevator was a smart move, but Eren seemed to judge it safe. They stood on opposite sides again, the soft elevator music not at all soothing the pounding of Erwin’s heart. He couldn’t look at himself in the mirrored walls—he didn’t want to see the terrified look in his wide eyes, the mess of his hair, the wrinkles in his shirt. So he watched Eren rock to and fro idly on his feet, one arm hooked in the arm of the housekeeping maid whom he had coerced into accompanying them downstairs by a gun pointed at her below the draping of his parka.

        They steered away from the lobby and the maid opened an employee only door, shaking as she led them to a staff exit. Eren gave her a tight one-armed hug and kissed her cheek, whispered some things to her that Erwin could not understand before he sank his fingers into Erwin’s elbow again and dragged him through the fading, bitingly cold afternoon sunlight to one of the many taxis loitering the tourist hot spots.

        Feeling very chilled and rigid, Erwin watched semi-familiar parts of the city blur by, parts he’d seen yesterday between the airport and his hotel.

        Eren slammed the partition closed between them and the driver, violently punching a number into the flip phone he pulled from his pocket. Someone answered. He blurted something. Listened. Blurted something else, harshly. Listened more. Glanced at Erwin. Said something about the Nevsky Prospket and Starbucks.

        He hung up, rolled the window down, and threw the cell phone out.

        Erwin watched it crash into the curb, bounce, skid into a gutter and disappear. He did not ask about it. Marie always liked things organized and planned. She hated when Erwin tried to suggest changes to her daily or weekly scheduler, but she always told him to just go with the flow. This was one of those times, Erwin felt, where going with the flow was entirely appropriate.

        Erwin cleared his throat and asked, “Do you still have my passport?”

        Eren mumbled, “I have your passport. Change of plans, by the way. What’s your shoe size?”

        “Nine or ten,” Erwin replied, voice fraying.

        “So—what, like… Forty-three? Forty-four? We’ll go with that.”

        Getting out of the taxi near one of the many pretty baroque buildings on the Prospekt, this one with a construction tarp and scaffolding across the upper floors, Eren pulled banknotes from his pocket and spoke to the driver. Erwin waited, the sidewalk achingly cold through his Argyle socks. He was trying to even out his breathing again so he could think clearly. Deep breaths. Hold them. Breathe out nice and slow. Read the signs across the street in English for the tourists.

        The taxi peeled away. Eren handed Erwin a pair of shoes, and Erwin held them delicately by two fingers.

        They sat at a table far from the window façade and behind a gray cement pillar, part of the coffee shop’s trendy industrial theme—Eren jittery and a little paranoid, Erwin wearing the shoes Eren bought off the taxi driver. The smell of coffee grounded him again. The sound of voices in English, or French, anything but Russian, at a few different tables around them was very comforting.

        “I have some emergency cash in my passport,” Erwin husked. “Get a coffee.”

        Eren shrugged.

        Jittery in his own right, bouncing a knee, Erwin leaned across the table and said very quietly, “I thought you said they wouldn’t come after me, because I had an alibi.”

        Eren avoided his eyes like didn’t want Erwin to see he wasn’t so sure of the plan anymore. Erwin had already picked up on as much. Erwin had kind of suspected that from the beginning and just ignored it.

        “They’re not after you,” Eren mumbled apologetically. “They’re after me.”

        “Because of the hit last night?”

        “No, because I went MIA.”

        “Why? Didn’t you tell them you’re leaving?”

        Eren’s face dimpled. “I only just decided I was leaving last night. But anyway, we’re in this together. Don’t worry.”

        Erwin was worried, though. He was really worried about smiling being his response to very uncomfortable matters. Why? Why did they have to be in this together? There was something sort of relieving and mildly disorienting and kind of hilarious about how bumbling real gangsters seemed to be, unlike their movie or TV show counterparts, but he was still worried.

        “Hmm,” he said.

        Eren sighed. “They’re in charge of me, so they’ll be in trouble if I leave. That’s why they want me back.”

        “What do you do for them, anyway?”

        “Business deals, lookout, distraction. Sometimes hits. Sometimes theft.”

        “Can’t you just tell them you want a break?”

        “Yeah, nobody just _leaves_ the Brotherhood, stupid. Especially because Pixis doesn’t want to lose my skill. They already stole me from Shadis. It’s too dangerous to let me go.”

        Erwin had no idea what to say to that, mainly because he knew nothing of these people or the business Eren spoke of, but also because it made him feel very sad and heavy. They sat in silence. Finally he murmured, “I want to help you, but I feel like I’m more of a—um, burden.”

        “No, you’re helping me,” Eren said. “Trust me. I’m not going to let you down.”

        Erwin gestured for his passport and went to buy a cup of coffee.

        When he came back, trying not to think about the way the taxi driver’s shoes pinched his pinky toes, there was someone else sitting in his seat—another man, in a gray Henley and black jeans, silver watch on one wrist and a fine double-breasted coat draped across his lap. His profile was smooth and even, very European model with that mystery and those angles, though Erwin couldn’t help but notice the bags under his eyes as he glared at Eren from Erwin’s seat.

        As Erwin approached, Eren stopped his vehement explanation—or that’s what Erwin assumed it was, at least, as he spoke breathlessly in Russian to this third member of their party.

        “Hello,” Erwin greeted properly in Russian, smiling uncertainly.

        Eren flipped up his parka hood and stood, looking both sheepishly and pointedly at the new stranger. Obviously this dark-haired petite man with the watch and the tousled nineties hair was who Eren had called in the taxi.

        “ _Eto_ Levi,” Eren introduced, gesturing to his friend.

        “ _Ochen’ priyatno_ ,” Levi husked back, eyes so blue-gray they were almost silvery as they pierced into Erwin. They caught him off guard. _Nice to meet you_ , he’d said. Immersion was really making it easier to think of phrases he’d learned.

        “ _Da, ochen’ priyatno_ ,” Erwin replied, stumbling over the words only once. He smiled faintly.

        Levi did not smile back. Levi stood as well, slipped on his coat, a scarf, and Erwin knew he and Eren were to follow him out the door.

* * *

**{moika river apartments, st petersburg.}**

Levi slammed a kitchen cabinet shut and snatched a bottle of whiskey off the shelf above the sink, sloshing out three glasses of it and gesturing for Eren and Erwin to both take one as he leaned back against the counter and downed half his own in one long, burning swallow.

        Erwin Smith, he read in the man’s passport before shoving it in his back pocket. American. Business trip. Accidental witness to the hit Eren skipped out on. Had an alibi at one of Shadis’s clubs last night, dancing dirty with Petra. Running from the crew. And now standing in his kitchen, half-dressed, waiting patiently for Levi to—get over remembering how it felt to dance dirty with him, to taste his mouth and grind against him—pour him another glass of whiskey since he’d taken his first like a shot.

        God damn, Levi was so sick and tired of cleaning up Eren’s messes.

        All right, so he kind of asked for it. Eren was a hell of a lot of trouble but Levi was apparently a masochist because he craved it. Maybe he liked the control. Maybe he liked being depended on. Maybe it was just that he was fucked up and Eren reminded him of his younger self—passionate, wild, stupidly eager and mildly—mildly?—unaligned with the rest of the world’s moral compass.

        Erwin was across the kitchen, near the fridge, looking around but trying to seem like he wasn’t. Eren was monkey in the middle like he wanted to keep a distance between the other two, leaning back against the black quartz stovetop island counter. He cradled his tumbler of whiskey in one limp hand and watched Levi with wide, hawk-like eyes, waiting for him to speak. Just God damn _leaning_ there in the most nonchalantly sensual way—he was doing it on purpose, Levi figured, mimicking the way he’d leaned there a few weeks ago not too long before Levi had him turned around, bent over and gasping against the quartz counter. Except this time around, there was no promise or invitation in his eyes. Just something dark and stormy that made Levi very uneasy.

        “Son of a bitch,” Levi muttered and hissed a long exasperated sigh through his teeth, closing his eyes and holding his head in one hand.

        “Tell me about it,” Eren echoed.

        Levi threw back another sip of his drink. “You’re nothing but trouble, you know that?”

        “I try, but I don’t try.”

        “Jean told me last night you didn’t show up for work.”

        “Well, he’s lying because I didn’t skip out, I just showed up late and got distracted by Erwin. He saw everything—well, not everything, but he saw too much and I didn’t want them to hurt him.”

        The Erwin fellow’s eyes jumped between them as they spoke—in Russian, so obviously he understood nothing of what they said, but he heard his name.

        Levi rolled his eyes. “Did you tell that to the Oprosniki?”

        Something in Eren’s demeanor hardened further, like he was going for poker face. “Nope.”

        “Have you told anyone where you are and what you’re doing?”

        “No. I don’t want them to know I have a civilian in tow.”

        “Okay, but you got him an alibi last night and I’m sure they don’t give a fuck—”

        “No, but see—now they’re after me because I didn’t check in or anything, and you know how Pixis gets, but I—” Eren cut off like he didn’t want to say something, glaring at Levi like Levi should know what it was he bit back. Levi didn’t. He didn’t pry, either. He was so very used to Eren’s mood swings, they didn’t even faze him anymore.

        “Well,” Eren rephrased. “They found me in Erwin’s hotel room and I tried to shake them by saying he’s some indirect associate of Kenny, and he’s dangerous, and I’m working on a side deal that they need to just butt out of, and Hanji shot a lamp and Erwin shot the suite television, and now the Oprosniki’s after me for running around and him for—”

        Levi choked on a swallow of whiskey and cut Eren a scathing glance.

        Eren finished up: “I can see on your face you get it so I’ll stop explaining.”

        “ _Fuck_ , Eren,” Levi hissed, dragging a hand down his face, “you overcomplicate things so much, you know that?”

        Eren nodded like he didn’t want to admit as much but didn’t want to argue, either. “Yeah,” he grunted grumpily into his whiskey. “Talk English now so that he understands, okay?” He gestured to Erwin and repeated himself in English. Erwin perked up, focusing again.

        “Sure,” Levi murmured, tipping his almost-empty whiskey Erwin’s direction.

        “I have a question,” Erwin said suddenly, voice pinched like his face. “Shouldn’t you have put a hood on me so I don’t know where this apartment is located?”

        Eren gave Erwin much the same look as Levi did, a mix of insult and disdain.

        “I’m just asking,” Erwin murmured. “In the movies—you know, never mind.”

        “So,” Eren went on, looking back to Levi. “I need your help getting him out of here safe. It’s my fault he’s in the middle of this, because I tried to do something nice. Why is it so hard to do nice things?”

        “Because we’re not nice people,” Levi said flatly.

        “I don’t think that’s true,” Eren cut back. “Will you help or not? Get him out of here or at least get them off his case?”

        “You know you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do after this,” Levi muttered.

        “Yes,” Eren murmured.

        Levi chewed on this, teeth grinding absently. He could figure it out. He always figured things out. It was part of the job—part of him. Levi had the inexplicable gift of _cleaning things up_. Bodies, blood, snitches, tails, sneaks, hot deliveries, dirty money. It was why Pixis kept him around, distanced enough from main business that it limited liability and scattered duties like his shelled computer scattered his IP address. Levi’s eyes veered around the dimly-lit kitchen while inside he browsed options, until finally a plan unfolded for him.

        “All right,” he husked, finishing his whiskey and setting the glass down with a harsh _clink_ to the counter. “But you owe me and I only accept payment up front. It’ll be better to keep you guys on the move, anyway. Harder for Hanji and co to find you. Right?”

        “Right,” Eren replied eagerly.

        Erwin nodded vehemently once he realized Eren and Levi looked at him to do so.

        “So,” Levi said, cracking his knuckles idly. “Get ready to go because I have a job tonight and you’re both going to help me. _Then_ I’ll tell you what we’re going to do about this bullshit.”

* * *

**{syzranskaya street, st petersburg | thursday night.}**

Erwin didn’t know what a midlife crisis felt like.

        He’d been wondering about it for some time now. When would it happen? Would it really be in the _middle_ of his life? He was only thirty-six; maybe he wasn’t at the middle of his life yet. Realistically men lived anywhere from eighty to ninety, as an average, probably, surely, after all things considered like family heart disease or good diet while young. Then there was that story about the woman who lived to be one hundred and ten, who said her secret was laughing a lot. Did he laugh enough? Would he only live twice the age at which he had his midlife crisis? And if that was the case, he couldn’t possibly predict how long he’d live, so what if—

        “ _Marie_ ,” Erwin had said over breakfast one morning, and Marie shot him a look from the other side of the kitchen where she struggled with half a grapefruit at the juicer. “Marie, what if I’ve already had my midlife crisis?”

        “I think you’d know,” Marie suggested. She was only a morning person to her favorite baristas.  

        He’d Googled it—signs a man was entering his midlife crisis. The articles mentioned debt, but Erwin was not in remarkable debt, like Nile who’d just leased an Audi. The websites talked about drastic changes in appearance as desperate attempts to reclaim youthful feelings. Erwin went to the salon where all the hairdressers knew him as Marie’s husband and flirted with him anyway, but he always just got a regular trim and left. Nothing about that felt like trying to reclaim his youth.

        One night Marie dropped the comment, “All my best friends have babies.” And Erwin had thought, _Here it is. Here’s the crisis._

        “Let’s make a baby, then,” he suggested.

        “Nah.” Marie patted him on the shoulder. “Babies are so much work.”

Erwin had tried to start drinking after dinner like Marie did, like the articles suggested were another sign of unhappiness and crisis. _Here it is._ But he’d just wound up with mild indigestion.

        Another night, Marie was annoyed the dishes weren’t done when she got back from yoga-pilates. And Erwin had snapped at her like he usually didn’t and he thought, _Here it is. We’ll get a divorce_.

        “Let’s hire a housekeeper!” Marie cried, lighting up. “Nile has a housekeeper, you know!”

        Maybe the problem was that Erwin had assumed all too standard things about midlife crises. Maybe midlife crises didn’t have to be what the articles or websites said.

        Maybe they were precisely this—missing his work conference because he was looking for an affair but was presently in borrowed clothes, still not shaven and sweating nervously in the back of a car on the way to a Red Box self-storage facility to pick up supplies to help a professional international criminal cell with a “job.”

        The car was nice, at least—a black two-door BMW, all fine leather interior and shining paneling. Fruity air fresheners were jabbed into the air vents. There was something else, though—

        It smelled vaguely like the woman at the warehouse. _Petra_.

        Levi’s apartment had been very nice, too—downright luxurious. All real wood floors and modernism cradled by updated old-world architecture. Cozy, and undeniably classy, in a way Erwin hadn’t really been prepared for. He’d sat on someone’s bed and waited patiently as Eren and Levi argued over what clothes to lend him. They’d settled on a white cable-knit sweater and black jeans, a black jacket, black gloves they stuck in the jacket pocket for him. Eren disappeared somewhere in the apartment, leaving Erwin to sit quietly and tensely while Levi dressed in similarly dark and unremarkable fashion, until Eren reappeared having found a change of his own clothes somewhere in the big flat. Of course—not without his parka.

        Erwin was sure it wasn’t some sort of accelerated Stockholm syndrome or anything, but he felt a panicky attachment to Eren the mafia maybe-prostitute trying to defect. Eren was his only connection to the normalcy that had still been his last night, anyway—he was the only one upon which Erwin felt he could depend, twisted (and a little hopeless) as that might seem to anyone outside the situation.

        “So do you live with Levi, then?” Erwin asked, turning to look at Eren from his spot in the passenger seat.

        Levi cut him a sidelong glance that reminded he also spoke English; Erwin smiled apologetically and hunched a little lower into his seat.

        Eren sighed with great drama and propped his foot up on the middle console, nighttime lights streaming over him in the cramped backseat of the Ambiente although it was not even seven o’clock yet.

        “Sometimes,” he replied. “Depends on my mood. Right now, no.”

        “Good,” Levi grunted, slouched casually and driving with just one arm. “It’s about time. I’ll leave your things in the courtyard for you to get tomorrow.”

        Eren snorted.

        Erwin turned back around and cleared his throat, running a finger nervously on the threads in the door leather. “Hmm,” he said. There was a flamboyant tension between Eren and this Levi fellow that felt extraordinarily familiar—like a fighting couple who thought no one could tell.

        “Hmm,” Erwin said again.

        The self-storage facility required a PIN for access, as did the manual lock on the actual storage unit. The place was unnervingly quiet, very spooky in the dark between lot lights. Erwin was a little self-conscious of how much he sort of towered over Levi and Eren—he wasn’t sure why, but it made him feel awkward and in the way.

        Eren and Levi murmured to each other in Russian again, still in those clipped, vindictive tones, but nice enough to get along for the time being. Erwin thought maybe he’d ask Eren about it later. For now, he just had to go with the flow. He wasn’t sure what he’d be doing, but if it was just some kind of security, he thought maybe he could handle it. Levi was going to help him afterwards. He needed to focus on that. It was already a little easier to breathe, knowing that. Actually, this all felt surprisingly relaxed and normal.

        In the storage unit was a curious mess of random, particularly ordinary items—furniture, cardboard boxes, plastic bins. A bed frame, three bookshelves, an old steamer trunk. Thrown-around wire hangers. A TV. There was a gaudy owl-shaped lamp near an old couch that looked like chintz curtains and Levi sidled and elbowed his way over, threw off the chintz cushions, whipped a knife out of—somewhere, it was so fast Erwin didn’t see—and stabbed through the thin fabric over the sofa’s interior frame. There was something rather graceful about his precision, his fearlessness. Like a cobra striking. It terrified Erwin but fascinated him.

        Eren wandered over and started collecting the items Levi pulled carefully from within the mutilated couch.

        A handgun. Another. A box of rounds, clinking as the two gangsters swiftly loaded new magazines. Some cash. Levi shuffled through a handful of passports, finally picking one. He hummed softly to himself, said something in Russian, showed it to Eren proudly.

        “Oh yeah,” Eren said, thankfully in English. “It _does_ look like him. Great.”

        Finally, it sank in to Erwin that they kept false identification and weaponry in the storage unit couch. His eyes widened.

        “Creative,” he said below his breath, in honest wonderment.

        Eren and Levi both glanced at him, and then at each other. Levi smirked faintly and tried to hide it by looking away. Eren flat-out grinned in glee.

        “How did you know those things were in there?” Erwin asked.

        “Because Mike and Hanji put them in there last Sunday,” Eren replied.

        “Isn’t—isn’t Hanji one of our enemies?”

        “No, Hanji’s part of the family.”

        Erwin nodded like any part of that made sense.

        “Here,” Levi said, shoving a passport at him. “You’re Finnish now, Joni Halla. You should also probably be a mute. So stay quiet and just follow along.”

        Boy, the last time he’d heard that, things had gone quite sour. Okay—well, first he’d danced with a beautiful woman, but _afterwards_ things went downhill fast.

        “Oh, I can’t—” Erwin stammered when Levi tried to hand him one of the revolvers and a silencer attachment.

        “You were perfectly fine taking mine earlier, weren’t you?” Eren teased, not exactly kindly.

        Erwin waited until his heart calmed at least a bit, Levi checking his watch and Eren piling pillows back on the couch. Finally Erwin conceded, voice tiny and frail, “Just make sure the safety is on.”

        Levi checked. “Yes, sir.”

        Erwin had never felt more outside himself as he did sliding the gun and its mosquito-like nose into a pocket on the inside of his jacket. Levi locked the unit again. They returned to the car. Eren lit a cigarette in the backseat, tapped Erwin to roll down the window and started humming some song that was vaguely familiar.

        “It’s a simple job,” Levi said in a low, flat voice, snapping a finger at Eren to give him a cigarette, too. “You’re just playing look-out. Mr. Joni, you SMS?”

        Eren and Levi’s eyes burned into Erwin. “Oh—” Right, _Joni_. He nodded. “You mean text?”

        “ _Molodyets_ ,” Levi sighed boredly. “Eren, the burner phone I gave you and Mr. Joni—save my number. You’ll text me immediately if anything is awry. I’ll tell you where to station when we get there. It’s a sales meeting, but I’m—”

        At the corner of the street to the storage facility was a white police van, and almost a block after they’d passed it, its lights popped on and it jostled off the shoulder in their direction.

        Levi and Eren argued fast, urgent—frantic, biting Russian and scalding glances were thrown from the front seat to the backseat. It sounded accusatory on Levi’s end, defensive on Eren’s. Another marital dispute. Eren sputtered in English, “Just pull over, Levi!”

        It was over.

        It was all over.

        Levi carefully pulled to the curb behind a few parallel-parked cars.

        His eyes jumped to Eren in the rearview; he snapped his fingers again, twice, thrice, harsh.

        Erwin heard the cold clacking of a gun before he saw it, out of the corner of his eye. Eren hid the gun under his parka, ready to jerk it out and shoot—shoot who, the officer?

        Oh God, it was over.

        Erwin resigned to that. He would end up in a foreign prison and he would be stuck. American journalists would write about him. He’d be on the news. He’d have to learn prison Russian. He’d never go home—that is, if he lived—

        The police officer made his way to Levi’s window. He stooped down, scanned the other occupants of the car, started talking in a deep, smoky voice. Erwin’s heart pounded so hard, he could feel it in his ears. He tried not to look guilty or afraid—the policeman couldn’t read their minds, he couldn’t possibly know they each had weapons on them—but he just kept staring dumbly. The officer didn’t seem to find it odd. Levi gestured to Erwin a few times, to Eren. Eren wagged his foot on the middle console and blew cigarette smoke out the window, watching the officer with hooded eyes.

        The conversation seemed congenial enough. Levi nodded, nodded. “ _Spasibo_.” The policeman left. The van U-turned and went back to its corner spot. Levi smoked silently for a moment and the cold night air felt so good on Erwin’s feverish skin. Erwin wondered if Levi was shaken. It was nice to know the mafia could still get shaken. Or it wasn’t so nice, to be that paranoid all the time. Finally Levi got back onto the road, one-handed. He didn’t say anything.

        Apparently Eren thought something needed to be said. He snaked an arm around Erwin’s headrest and leaned up, explaining softly into his ear, “We thought maybe it was Kenny, or maybe someone had used this car for transport without telling us and they wanted to search it.”

        “Aren’t we using it for transport right now?” Erwin joked more to himself.

        “No, for drugs, Erya, drugs. May I call you Erya?”

        “He’ll call you Erya even if you say no,” Levi warned. “I’m Lyovushka.”

        “Um, sure,” Erwin replied thickly.

        “Anyway, I just have a headlight out. Relax, _zhoposhniki_ ,” Levi grumbled.

        “That means ‘shitheads,’” Eren translated.

        Ignoring him, Levi continued his instructions from earlier. “I’m fronting for Petra tonight so there should be no issue, as long as no one is interrupting us. _Voprosy_?”

        “ _Nyet_ ,” Eren said. “ _Ty mozhno povyerit’ v nas_.”             

        Erwin didn’t care that he didn’t understand the language, because he was really starting to enjoy hearing it.

        “Just follow my lead, Captain America,” Eren said for the umpteenth time.

        “Were you humming Queen earlier?” Erwin asked.

        Eren lit up, and it was almost sad how innocent and hopeful it seemed. “Queen is one of my favorite musicians,” he professed.

        Erwin smiled a little, not even worrying about correcting him— _band_ , not _musician_. He couldn’t relax himself after that minor heart attack with the police. The gun felt rather obvious and dangerous against his ribs, but at the same time there was something thrilling about having it on him.

        “Oh,” he said. “Before I forget to ask, how do I take the safety off, anyway?”

        Levi burst into laughter so suddenly he choked on a drag off his cigarette. His eyes flashed over the other two in the car and his toothy grin was much more shark-like than Erwin would have liked.

        “Oh, _my v zhope_ ,” he said. “We are so fucked.”

 

**END CH. III**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translations.** please forgive me for sucking. 
> 
> *** zdrastvyte:** здраствуйте, _hello_ (formal)  
>  *** tseplyat po oseni schitayut:** цыплят по осени считают, lit. _count chicks in autumn_ , meaning _don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched_  
>  *** pochemu govorim po-angliiskii:** почему говорим по-английский, _why are we speaking in english?_  
>  *** loshad’:** лошадь, _horse_  
>  *** tak:** так, just, uh… _hmm, so, like_ …  
>  *** otlichno:** отлично, _excellent_  
>  *** dorogoi:** дорогой, _precious/darling_  
>  *** eto levi:** это levi, _this is levi_  
>  *** ochen’ priyatno:** очень приятно, _nice to meet you_  
>  *** da:** да, _yes_  
>  *** oprosniki:** опросники, uh i made this up, but it’s a play on like _surveyors, survey corps_  
>  *** molodyets:** молодец, _awesome/great/attaboy_  
>  *** spasibo:** спасибо, _thank you_  
>  *** erya:** эря, eren trying to make a diminutive out of erwin’s name  
>  *** lyovushka:** лёвушка, a diminutive of lev/levi  
>  *** zhoposhniki:** жопошники, _ass faces_ (or a gay slur).  
>  *** voprosy:** вопросы, _questions?_  
>  *** nyet:** нет, _no_  
>  *** ty mozhno povyerit' v nas:** ты можно поверить в нас, uhh i think _you can count on us_ , basically  
>  *** my v zhope:** мы в жопе, _we’re fucked_ , lit. _we’re in the ass_ (lol)
> 
>  *** levi's apartments:** imagine it! http://www.luxuryestate.com/p10037238-apartment-for-sale-saint-petersburg  
>  *** nevsky prospekt starbucks:** https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%BA%D1%81/@59.932181,30.359174,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1s-1y8JUDbfHrY%2FVksEKoaxtZI%2FAAAAAAAALrE%2FBXW5VYUANKc!2e4!3e12!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-1y8JUDbfHrY%2FVksEKoaxtZI%2FAAAAAAAALrE%2FBXW5VYUANKc%2Fs270-k-no%2F!7i3024!8i4032!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x8abfe8c4e097610f!6m1!1e1


	4. Black Tea and Revenge Fucks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erwin's still thinking about Petra. Marco and the Oprosniki have a phone call with Pixis and Jean breaks the bad news. Hanji sometimes gets locked out of her own apartment. Meanwhile, Eren and Erwin have a nice talk on the roof of an abandoned warehouse 20 km from the city center, and Erwin is a surprisingly good shot.

**{bol’shoi sampsonievskiy prospekt, no. 4-6, st petersburg | thursday night.}**

Marco was fresh out of a shower and in his bedroom. Jean could smell him, trailing from the bathroom—sweet, fresh skin, expensive cologne, tang of familiar shampoo.

        He knocked on the cracked bedroom door to announce himself before just sliding in, catching Marco at the foot of his bed where he had clean clothes laid out.

        “Babe,” Marco greeted, chuckling softly under his breath as Jean wound his arms around him from behind and nuzzled into the nape of his bare neck. “Take your coat off and stay a while, why don’t you?”

        “Mm,” Jean hummed in reply, because he was not very good at not blurting out exactly what was on his mind so he decided he just shouldn’t say anything at all. He ran his palms up and down the stretch of Marco’s lower abdomen, his hips, let his fingers toy with the waistband of Marco’s lounge pants and hoped to God Marco couldn’t tell how nervous he was—feel his racing heart, the tension in his shoulders.

        Marco turned around in his arms. He held Jean by the open sides of his coat and caught his mouth in a rather promising kiss. “I have a phone meeting with Pixis,” he whispered against Jean’s lower lip, chuckling, turning his face side to side to avoid Jean’s chasing mouth. “You’re going to make me late.”

        “Hmm,” Jean said again.

        Marco went still, all the flirt draining out of him as his gaze cut over to find Jean’s. Chin inclined, eyes hooded. He studied him for a tense, quiet moment.

        “What’s wrong?” Marco asked flatly, and Jean was doomed.

        “Ah…” Jean cleared his throat. “We don’t know where Eren is.”

        Marco leveled him with a razor-sharp stare. His eyes widened a little, not in shock but in frustration as his mouth tightened into the patented business poker face Jean knew only too well.

        “I’m sorry?” he said curtly.

* * *

The penthouse was eerily quiet.

        Jean didn’t like this quiet.

        They all stood circled around the polished black walnut desk in the upstairs office, the one with the shining marble floors and red wallpaper, gawking at the desk telephone like a group of dazed family members at an open casket. The phone was on speaker, and the silence infected from the other line. A long, dreadful, ominous silence.

        Hanji fidgeted, sitting in the leather desk chair and waiting for Pixis to say something from his cozy vacation house, all the way at the other end of the phone call. Armin was in the corner, spinning the big generations-old globe Pixis always asked him to dust. Marco paced slowly back and forth along the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf across the office, his hands in the pockets of his Italian suit pants and his hair still damp from his shower, tousled like that Leonardo DiCaprio from the American _Titanic_ film.

        “Well, Jean?” Pixis asked, in that creepily lighthearted and congenial way of his. It crackled a little over speaker phone. Jean was convinced he could hear jazz music or something in the background. He could just picture Pixis sitting out on the big terrace of the Yalta house, overlooking the Black Sea in a fluffy robe, smoking a fat cigar, drinking a vodka-orange or a local beer.

        Marco stopped short, toes scuffing on the tasseled edge of the Turkish carpet. “Well, Jean?” he echoed like Jean needed a translation or something. Jean wilted, head hung as he propped himself at the side of the desk with tense, locked arms. Marco’s good eye flashed over him. He smiled faintly and there was nothing pleased about it. Normally a look like that got Jean all hot and bothered—when it wasn’t directed at him, anyway.

        “Go on,” Marco said thickly. “Tell Pixis what’s up.”

        All eyes moved to Jean. Jean raised his brows and drummed his knuckles on the desk, smirking nervously. God, Jean loved Marco, but Marco’s avoidance of any association with disaster could easily be mistaken for scapegoating sometimes.

        “The job’s done,” Jean said, voice scratching out his throat. “So that’s good.”

        Marco stomped a foot, flung a hand out. Somehow having one eye covered by a patch made the other doubly intense as he demanded, “Tell him what _else_ , Jean!”

        Armin stopped spinning the globe and gawked at Jean, a silent plea for him to just obey. Hanji sat with her mouth pressed to her laced fingers, eyes sliding between Marco and Jean and back again.

        Jean heaved an impatient sigh and dragged the desk phone over to him so he didn’t have to speak so loud for Pixis to hear him. Defeated, he gritted out, “Eren’s missing again.”

        “ _What the fuck do you mean he’s missing?_ ”

        “I mean—” Jean rubbed sheepishly at the side of his face, heart in his throat. “I mean, he ditched us and he’s running around with some son of a bitch…” He looked to Marco for help, brow knotting. Marco shrugged limply, turning away to calm himself by running his fingers up and down the spines of old, well-loved books. Jean took it as a cue to go with his gut. So he did. He didn’t say what Eren said about a side deal. He said, “Some son of a bitch he met at some bar and is fucking around with. You know how he is.”

        There was another long, terrifying pause. There were two things that could happen—Pixis would blow up on them, or he would remain very ominously peaceful.

        Finally Pixis said, “I’m not worried. I know full well he’ll be back by the time I’m home next week. Right?”

        It was cheerful, but the threat was clear. Jean almost wish he’d just had an outburst.

        Armin ran into the corner of a chair. Jean’s hands were clammy. There was a line of tension in Marco’s shoulders. Hanji stared grimly out the window at the Smolny, not so far in the distance.

        They all knew what Pixis was thinking, because they were thinking it, too: Nobody left. They were a family. They stuck together. Everyone knew everything about each other because it was too dangerous not to, and it was out of the question to just run off like Eren liked to all the time—

        Hanji dragged the phone back over to her. “Pixis,” she said, “there’s nothing to worry about. Don’t ruin your vacation over this.”

        “Oh, I won’t! Listen—my daughter’s here, with the grandbaby. I have to go. Have Eren pick me up from the airport next week, okay?” Rustling. “Anya, sweetheart! And look at you, Sofka, I don’t know what’s chubbier, your cheeks or your curls—” _Click_.

        “His granddaughter _is_ really cute,” Armin commented mousily.

        “Call Conny and Sasha,” Marco snapped, stalking out of the office and pulling at his collar like it choked him. “Have them do their hacker thing! You lost Eren around Moika Street, right? See if they can trace his burner through the cell towers around there. Say I’ll buy them that dirt bike they want—”

        Jean followed, frantically. “Marco, that’s not necessary—”

        Down the curving stairs, through the black and gold sitting room, footsteps crystalline on the white Carrara marble, around the corner and down the hall to Marco’s bedroom where Jean caught the door Marco tried to slam so Marco just threw it back open and scowled in Jean’s face.

        “Marco, you need to relax,” Jean insisted reflexively.

        Marco’s brow knotted deeply above the eye Jean could see. All the business demeanor was gone now; what was left was the soft fear that often crept in on Pixis’s second-in-command, usually after midnight, after too many drinks. It was moments like these that Jean noticed Marco’s freckles again.

        “This is the first time Pixis has left me in charge of affairs while he’s gone,” Marco spat, viciously, like Jean didn’t understand. “He’s my uncle, you know, I can’t let him down—I never let him down—it’s _your guys’_ job to keep an eye on the whore, and somehow you _always_ seem to lose him. Can’t you just not lose him while I’m in charge?”

        Something gave a little pinch in Jean at that. He hated when Marco called Eren _the whore_ and he hated when Marco acted like no one got it. They all got it. None of them could let Pixis down; they owed him. What Pixis gave them in return for their services—the wealth, the amenities, the comfort, the safety, in exchange for their individual, unique skill sets—it was _far_ better than what the world offered otherwise.

        Better than getting beaten half to death for not paying rent, than playing soldier with no real idea of what to fight for, than shattering storefront windows, than drifting in and out of consciousness vomiting behind a junker in a used car lot. Better than Hanji’s ex-husband (who was also now ex-alive) or her nonetheless stellar previous career at a popular strip joint. Better than Armin’s negligent grandfather. Better than Mikasa’s precarious existence and simultaneous nonexistence in Japan. Better than track marks on Eren’s arms and the animal look in his eyes when he was strung out, the way he didn’t even cringe with a needle dangled at his lip lest he waste any precious drug-blood still in the syringe—

        “You’re not letting Pixis down,” Jean snapped back. He didn’t know what else to say.

        “You _lost_ them, first of all.” Marco’s voice was ragged and raw. “You _lost_ them and then you tell me Eren might be running around with a friend of Kenny’s—worse, someone we _don’t_ know—and he left Shadis for us, you don’t honestly believe he wouldn’t pull the same shit again?”

        “He’s pretended to leave before, he never follows it through,” Jean hissed. “Eren’s predictable. It’s probably nothing. I’m sure if we _don’t_ go after him for a day or so, he’ll get all bored and offended and he’ll come back for a shower and his own bed as if nothing happened. You know that.”

        “And if he is actually running around with someone he shouldn’t be? _Fuck_. You looked at Levi’s, too?”

        Oh, shit.

        “Uh,” Jean said.

        Marco shoved him back, one eye furiously wide and drilling into Jean cold, livid, and deeply shocked. “You didn’t look at Levi’s?”

        “I texted Levi and Levi said he isn’t there!” Jean insisted.

        Marco laughed, in disbelief. He shook his head. “Well, for fuck’s sake, go _look!_ ” he cried dramatically, like he could not fathom how he actually had to remind them of as much.

        Honestly, Jean couldn’t fathom it, either.

* * *

**{levi’s moika river apartment, st. petersburg | thursday night.}**

“He’s still not answering,” Hanji muttered, snapping her phone shut and leaning back against the broad dark door opposite Levi’s front door.  

        “That could mean Eren’s over,” Jean suggested, not without a measure of discomfort, hunching lower into his coat.

        “No,” Armin murmured, back by the iron-wrought breezeway staircase, another one of the building’s flourishes—the complete opposite of Pixis’s place, neo-baroque on the outside and super sleek on the inside, while Pixis’s grotesquely old-world luxurious multi-storied penthouse hid inside an angular, slate-colored high-rise.

        “What do you mean, no?” Jean demanded.

        Hanji groaned then, threw her head back against the wall and slid down to her haunches to grumpily prop her face in one hand, frowning up at them. “That’s right,” she grumbled. “He had that gig tonight—the one he’s been working on for months with Petra—the munitions one—”

        “Okay, so maybe Eren’s in there taking a nap or something,” Jean sputtered. He wanted it to be true so badly. He just wanted to go home. He had not planned on bullshit like this this week. He didn’t have the energy to worry about Eren right now—really, truly worry about him.

        “Do you think he _is_ working on the side with Kenny?” Armin whispered, avoiding their eyes. Clearly the possibility of such was eating at him. Normally he hid his emotions well, while Eren wore them on his fucking sleeve, but considering how betrayed the light in Armin’s eyes was, the prospect was almost unbearable. It pissed Jean off even more. How dare Eren do this to Armin? Oh yeah, once they got him back home, Jean was going to give the bastard _hell_ —

        “No. He’s too reckless to pull off something like that,” Jean tried to reassure everyone. Including himself. But Marco was right. Eren had fucked Shadis over to join them, there was no saying he couldn’t do it again.

        Hanji swung up off her haunches and went over to Levi’s door. “Does anyone know the door code?”

        “ _You’re_ one of his roommates,” Armin reminded miserably.

        “Yeah, but he changes this thing all the time.” Hanji punched something in. Access was denied. She thought for a moment. She punched something else in. Nothing. She sighed heavily, thought longer. There were only three attempts before it set off an alarm. Hesitantly, Hanji punched in her third guess.

        The door unlocked.

        “What’d you enter?” Jean asked.

        “The number equivalent of ‘black tea.’” Hanji snapped a finger. “He’s a piece of cake.”

        Armin drew his gun once they were in the dark apartment. Jean thought it was a little much, but—besides the chance Eren was hanging with some shady motherfuckers, Levi’s realm was a darker one than theirs, a precarious unknown that Pixis wouldn’t talk about. And neither would Levi. All he knew was that Levi was on their side. Levi was as close to Pixis as Marco was, maybe closer. And Levi was good at cleaning things up.

        They searched every room.

        Turned on lights, threw back curtains, looked behind couches and chairs and closed doors. Hanji paused in the kitchen to grab a snack. They even checked the closets in the bedrooms that weren’t Levi’s.

        They found nothing.

        But they heard something.

        In the master bath was a private pine-lined Finnish sauna, about the size of a water closet but with a built-in bench and hidden iPod jack, a shelf for towels.

        The sound of the steam running was a gentle hum through the open bathroom door into Levi’s room. Dim light bled out from under the sauna door.

        Instinctively, they moved into a formation of sorts—Armin ready at the corner of the bed, Hanji behind the bathroom door. With a loud _crack_ and a small splintering sound, Jean kicked the sauna door hard enough to bust the inner latch lock and everyone readied for any possibility—

        “ _What the unholy fuck_?” Mike roared from inside the sauna.

        “O-oh—I—fuck, I’m sorry, Mike—” Jean choked on the words, teetering backwards and flushing hot red at the ears.

        Armin dropped his aiming arm with the gentle chatter of gunmetal and wilted in defeat.

        Hanji whipped her head around the corner to see the face of the voice she knew so well, big broad scarred and tattooed Mike, Levi’s other roommate, cramped on the sauna bench and grabbing a towel to cover his naked lap—she burst into howling laughter so true (and probably relieved) she crumpled down to her knees then finally just sat on the bathroom floor and laughed hysterically with her elbow propped on the tiled whirlpool bath.

* * *

**{undisclosed address, 20 km from st petersburg center | thursday night.}**

Shushary was an industrial suburb of the city, just after the KAD and M10 freeway interchange. The building was the only one on the side road for a good block and a half, with an abandoned factory on the horizon behind it and random scatterings of broken cement blocks and sagging chain-link, like some new dystopian sort of foothills. It looked like it had been an old schoolhouse at one point, squat and yellowish in color, with fat square pillars holding up a terrace over the front doors. Someone had spray painted the northern side of the building with something political that didn’t matter anymore. Nobody had cared to clean it up.

        Two stray cats ran at the whisper of Levi’s tires on the gravel. He’d turned his headlights off before they’d even reached this road.

        “You know the SOS,” he reminded Eren.

        Eren punched it into a draft text message and showed Erwin, hugging himself closer to the front passenger seat. “It’s Morse.”

        “I want you on the roof,” Levi said quietly, killing the ignition and eyes flashing between the two of them in the slant of moonlight through the windshield. “We’ll go in together. And then you’ll go up. You see anyone, you know what to do.”

        It was the usual game—Levi introduced Erwin and Eren as his associates and demanded his meeting partners introduce him to their associates, as well. And then Levi refused to discuss the sale until it was just himself and the meeting partner, all associates outside the room. It was a front and it was also a display of integrity—a way to get the meeting party’s guard down, like they thought it made Levi vulnerable or something.

        There was a wagging fire escape at the back of the building that Eren practically had to beg Erwin to climb.

        “Relax, Captain America, you’re _fine_ ,” he snickered, watching Erwin over his shoulder—clinging to the crooked handrail and flinching at every step Eren took because it made the whole thing waver a little against the side of the building. It was only three flights, though; the fall wouldn’t necessarily _kill_ a man.

        The roof had some architectural ornamenting perfect behind which to station themselves, Eren at one corner of the ridge and Erwin at the other, just a meter or two between them.

        “What did he mean by we know what to do?” Erwin asked, hands folded idly in his lap and the nighttime wind blowing his loose blond hair in and out of his eyes in a way that made him look a lot more rugged and young than he’d looked last night.

        Eren shrugged, plucking out a cigarette and lighting it quickly behind a cupped hand. “We alert him or we take care of it. Our judgment.”

        “Hmm,” Erwin said, nodding like he understood, but Eren was getting to know by now that it was just his way of processing things only on a surface level before filing them away for later emotional response.

        “How long will we be up here?” he whispered.

        Eren blew a stream of cigarette smoke up at the stars, leaning with his head back against the roof’s precast concrete slabs. “Um… I don’t know, forty-five minutes? It depends on how long they make the icebreaker. And then there’s the actual sales pitching. Stuff like that.”

        “What is he…selling?”

        Eren offered Erwin his cigarette for a drag and this time Erwin did not look so guilty for accepting it. “Fuck if I know. He’s our lone wolf.”

        “And it’s for Petra?”

        Eren stared up at the stars for a moment, before rolling back over and snuggling up to the concrete ridge, resting his face on a folded arm. With the sighted Hämmerli Levi had given him propped lovingly back against his shoulder, he scanned the dark world below.

        _For Petra._

He couldn’t believe Mr. Erwin was still caught up in Petra. He’d heard American men were more impatient than that. It was a much more Russian thing to dwell—not on the trivial things fate took care of, but on heartache.

        “Yeah, I guess so,” Eren sighed.

        “I left my Blackberry in the hotel,” Erwin said, like he was talking to himself. But he slid his eyes over to Eren, worried dark blue to match the worried pinch of his mouth. He looked sort of funny, so tall and big but curled up against the roof with Eren like a kid playing hide and seek. Eren smiled faintly. Erwin didn’t seem to notice. He went on, “And my wallet, too. They’ll have my credit cards if they took it. If they took my phone, you think they’ll go after my wife and family?”

        Eren shook his head slowly. “Oprosniki’s not that angry. If anything, they dumped it to hide your existence.”

        “When do you think I’ll be going home?” Erwin whispered back—and he wasn’t whiny this time, just very resigned and straightforward, waiting for Eren to look him in the eye. There was something very strong and disarming about his acceptance, like the sad stares of gold-speckled martyrs in church icon walls. It caught Eren a little off guard. Caught him in a distracting image—actually sleeping with Mr. Erwin Smith, the way he’d feel in bed, all raw manliness, cling to those broad shoulders, those strong arms, sink into the crush of his hips, let his own body be conquered by Erwin’s body, hot and flushed with restrained passion—he’d probably be tender, too, judging by his character out of bed—and sometimes a guy just wanted to be lionized like that, crushed and conquered—

        “Eren?” Erwin said.

        “Oh,” Eren said back, laughing. “Right. Uh, I don’t know. Just trust Levi. He’s going to get us out of this.”

        Erwin nodded. There was another short quiet in which Eren wondered if Erwin had imagined anything like what he just had at all in the last twenty-four hours—whether in curiosity or desperation, didn’t matter. No, he’d probably imagined Petra. Ha.       

        “You know,” Erwin murmured, borrowed coat collar dancing lazily against his throat, “you speak English very well.”

        Eren smiled humbly. “Thank you. It’s a must in this business. But then again, the whole world has to know English so the Englishmen don’t have to know anything. Right?”

        Erwin nodded idly. “What about you? Do you speak anything else?”

        Eren sighed, looking up at the stars again. “ _Ja_ ,” he said, switching to what German had lingered from childhood. Forgetting not to roll his R’s, he said _auf Deutsch_ , “I want to help you now more than I did before but I do not think fucking you is a good idea anymore.” He shrugged and shifted to French. “I don’t think I’m very good at revenge fucking, anyway. And I have no idea how we will get out of this mess, so I’m as nervous as you.”

        His gaze flickered down to Erwin again and he reared back a little when he found Erwin gawking at him with intense enchantment. “What?” he grunted, scowling. Erwin laughed, for the first time not embarrassed of himself.

        “Nothing,” he said softly.

        “My father was German,” Eren muttered. “My mom was Russian, but she grew up in Bruges and Paris, and she was actually going to school to study languages.”

        “Going to school?” Erwin echoed, stressing the past tense.

        Eren knew exactly what he wanted to know. “Before she died, yeah.” He flicked his cigarette butt off the side of the roof—

        And from the corner of his eye, caught a shifting in the shadows a block down by the street sign.

        He bristled, heart skipping a beat or two. He chambered the Hämmerli and with a scrape of roof grit and gravel he slithered into a steadier, more concealed crouch.

        Four figures, strolling with a purpose down the empty street.

        Eren snapped his fingers at Erwin. “You see them?” he half-mouthed. “Those guys—”

        With a rustle of his coat and another gritty sound of the roof below Erwin’s heels this time, Erwin leaned a little to the side and peeked around their hiding spot. “They’re just pedestrians,” he whispered back, confused.

        “Fuck no,” Eren hissed, “that’s against code—meetings and jobs, no pedestrians. You have to make sure of it. Bad etiquette if you don’t. Besides, what the fuck would pedestrians be doing here right now?”

        Well, there was progress, but Erwin was back to his neurotic, panicky self now, looking terribly at a loss as he argued, “But they’re just… I don’t know. Homeless? Drug addicts? Vandalizers?”

        Eren flipped up the sight on the Hämmerli single-action. “No,” he whispered, squinting, watching the men as they approached. “Look at them. They’re—what do you say?—they’re packing, I know they are. Look at the way they’re walking.” He spit out a scoff of a breath. “Amateurs,” he seethed.

        They were a block from the building now, and their purpose was drifting. If they weren’t headed to the building, they would have continued on in a straight, strong line. But they were slowing, stalling. Wind tugged at Eren, sweeping across the roof, combing through the long dry grass patched around the place. The silence of the night sank heavy to his shoulders. It was like all the stars were whispering down his neck, intuition. _They’re suspicious. Suspicious. Danger._

        “Get out the phone,” Eren said, very evenly. For a second he feared Erwin didn’t hear him. But then Erwin carefully got out the phone, like he was afraid of moving. As the strangers got closer to the building, Eren followed them with the Hämmerli and edged out to Erwin: “Send Levi an SOS. His is the only number in there. Text him dot, dot, dot—”

        The joint in his thumb popped as he cocked the hammer; he was that tense, clutching it so tightly. Who the fuck had Levi met that they were this sloppy, this mediocre? A group of newbies, maybe—not necessarily a bad thing, a group to absorb into their kingdom at least, before someone else snatched them up—especially if they were good at what they did—but newbies were cocky, very cocky, and prone to showing off in an attempt to secure reputations via scare tactics, by reckless violence or—

        “ _Eren_ ,” Erwin said, so quietly that Eren almost didn’t hear him. He shot him a scathing look—and was immediately taken aback by the look in Erwin’s eyes.

        Still, silent despair. The look in his eyes begged Eren not to kill someone in front of him. As if to say, _You couldn’t really be capable of that, could you…?_

He was, though. And it wouldn’t be the first time, either.

        Eren’s throat tightened a little. A hopelessness and guilt like that, God—and here he was, dragging this good man around through this chaos. For a moment, Eren felt a glimmer of agony, felt like a monster. Like he’d told Levi— _Sometimes we all want to do good things again, you know_.

        Eren hissed out a sigh.

        “Fuck me,” he muttered in exasperation, shoving the cocked target pistol at Erwin, who held it very carefully in two hands like a precious vase or something, the twist of desperate confusion on his face making him seem very old and very young at the same time.

        Eren scrambled down the back fire escape and tried to mess up his hair and his clothes a little as he fast-walked around the opposite side of the building to meet the men head-on.

        Just as he’d expected, they stopped short when they saw him stumble onto the sidewalk and into the moonlight. They tensed; one of them got out his gun preemptively. One of the stray cats blinked at Eren distrustfully from the gutter. Eren stooped down and clucked his tongue for it to come near him. It didn’t. His heart pounded so hard, it made his head hurt a little.

        “Hey!” one of the strangers called, sounding a little unsure. “You, down there—”

        “What the fuck are you doing around here?” the other snarled. This one had a beanie on, a nose ring. “Get lost—we’ve got something going on here. You shouldn’t be here. Who the fuck are you?”

        Eren stood, took a deep breath. And let everything dissolve into work instinct, like sticky tar dissolving into water over a tiny flame.

        He shoved his hands in his pockets and started swaying up the sidewalk to the men. Crunched over a broken bottle, looked the angry one right in the eye.

        “Cheap,” he said in reply to the question of his identity, smirking a hard street smirk, bouncing his weight on one foot and running his tongue across his teeth—a gesture that always meant one of two things: someone who could kick ass, or a person who put out. “Broke,” he added, scanning the group of ambitious thugs for the most attractive in their midst and giving him a good, obvious once-over.

        “Nac, he’s just a junkie faggot, forget him,” someone in the back muttered, elbowing the angry one. He craned over his shoulder. “Go to hell!” he singsonged at Eren.

        The angry one whipped around and muttered to his outspoken friend, “Mylius, I haven’t gotten head in like, a month—”

        “We’re early, aren’t we? We’re not late?” The one with the gun patted around his pockets to find means to check the time. “We have a few minutes—”

        Snickers, snorts, heckling. “A few minutes!” “That fast, eh?” “Fuck off, shitheads—seriously, though, a _month_ —” “Hurry then, you oaf.”

        Iron grip, on his elbow. Eren let Nac, the angry one in the beanie, drag him across the building’s half-overgrown lot. He gestured wildly for Eren to hit the ground as he leaned back against none other than Levi’s car and started unfastening his pants.

        This would buy enough time for Erwin to send the SOS text to Levi and here, he wasn’t killing anyone, wasn’t Erwin happy?

        “Don’t look!” Nac laughed and growled at his heckling friends. “Go around back or something!”

        Eren rolled his eyes. He dropped to his knees and swatted the guy’s hands away from his fly. Nac had tattoos like he’d been in prison but Eren would bet money they were just copycat tattoos and not actually earned. He sighed boredly, pulled the guy’s rather unimpressive dick from his boxers, said, “I have no disease, promise—”

        A strangled, agonized sound something like a choke braided into a shout erupted from the yard behind Levi’s car. Frantic pleading followed, the slipping, crunching tempo of someone running across rocky dirt and pavement. A scrape. A slap of skin on blacktop. A gunshot—a sickening crack.

        Eren leaned to the side and peeked over the hood of Levi’s car, just in time to see Levi throw down a broken two-by-four. One of the amateur thugs wavered a step or two, then crumbled to the ground holding his head.

        It happened so fast, Eren didn’t realize Nac had looked, too. There was a flash—a nearby _pop_ from the heavens—the whine of a bullet and perfume of gunpowder. A tiny bit of blood burst like petals falling from a tree and Eren felt the dirt behind him spray up, pepper his back with tiny rocks.

        Eyes wide, Eren looked up. Someone had shot Nac in the arm. Not grazed him, no, but shot right through his upper arm. The bullet had exited and narrowly missed Eren. Hit the ground behind him.

        “ _Augh!_ ” the thug against Levi’s car howled, clutching at his arm. Eren shoved him back into his pants and even took a second to politely zip them back up. “ _AUGH!_ ” the guy wailed again, this one a little more shriek-like, because Eren caught his dick with the zipper.

        “Oops, I’m so sorry!” Eren said—and it was a real apology, it was true surprise, but it startled him so much that he dissolved into guilty giggles.

        Nac shoved past Eren and staggered, tripped, rounded Levi’s car screaming about being shot and what has happened to his men? Eren knew what happened to his men. Levi had gotten to them. Hit one with a two-by-four, snapped another’s arm, knocked one out on the pavement.

        Eren looked higher up the building and saw Erwin staring down from the roof in shock, still holding the Hämmerli out with both hands.

        “Nac! Nac!” someone on the ground moaned. “My arm—”

        “ _You motherfucker!_ ” the ringleader with his beanie and nose ring roared, charging even though he was wounded.

        In two lightning jabs, Levi hit this Nac fellow in the lower throat and then the bridge of the nose, spun and slammed a snap of a roundhouse into the side of the guy’s head. The guy was dazed for a split second—and then tumbled down choking on his breath.

        Eren looked up again.

        Erwin was gone.

        On the second floor of the building, Levi’s meeting partners and their bodyguards rushed out to the terrace, clearly concerned by all the noise.

        Levi grabbed one of the young thugs’ guns and shot out all the rounds with a hollow rain of shells. He tossed the empty revolver in the grass. Standing amongst the wreckage, digging for his car keys, he yelled up at the terrace, “You see this fucking mess? This is how you represent yourself? You allow your men to rape and bully? Is that how you typically hold business meetings? Huh? Have some God damn dignity!”

        “ _Fuck!_ ” his meeting partner cursed the idiots below, shaking his fists at the night sky. “Levi, I’m so sorry—no, I had no idea they—”

        “Fuck off to Petra!”

        “Petra didn’t offer as much money as you! Should I call an ambulance?”

        “Probably!”

        “I’ll call you tomorrow?”

        “Call me tomorrow!”

        Levi unlocked his car. Erwin came staggering around from the back of the building, eyes wide, cradling the Hämmerli like a wounded bird or something. Eren snatched it from him and threw himself into the backseat of the car as Erwin sagged into shotgun.

        Levi peeled out and only turned his headlights back on once they hit the freeway.

        “Wait, pull over!” Erwin moaned.

        Levi swerved to the shoulder and he and Eren watched as Erwin opened the passenger door, leaned out, and threw up on the road. He stayed there a moment, head hung, breathing slowly but deeply, and then he cleared his throat. Spit. Slammed the car door shut, got comfortable in his seat, ran a hand through his hair.

        “Okay,” Erwin said, clearing his throat one more time. “I’m good. Thank you.”

        Levi smirked like he was proud of this transformation.

        Erwin smiled primly at Eren over the shoulder of his seat. “May I have a cigarette?” he murmured.

 

 

**END CH. IV**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translations.** please excuse me for sucking.
> 
>  *** pixis penthouse (bol'shoi sampsonievskiy)** : imagine it! http://www.luxuryestate.com/p3127385-penthouse-for-sale-saint-petersburg and http://www.luxuryestate.com/p10233344-apartment-for-sale-saint-petersburg  
>  *** yalta** : used to be a seaside vacation hot spot for noility/royalty, on the crimean peninsula


	5. The Plan.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Petra’s into you,” Levi says, and Erwin is obviously fantasizing about her from his blanket bed on the floor. Levi isn’t lying. He’ll call them once he has a plan secured. And Eren thinks that if Levi’s cabin is where he’ll spend his last hours as a Brother, so be it. This is peaceful. This is worth it. This place, far from everything else, full of happy memories, is where they could all always pretend they were normal, good people again for a while. Eren likes that.

**{levi’s moika river apartment, st petersburg | thursday night.}**

Erwin felt better after another shower. It was close to midnight. His body ached, in a dull throbbing way, but he was wide-eyed and awake. Eren followed him around, even sat outside the bathroom door as he showered—not like he wanted anything, just like he was afraid to let Erwin out of his sight.

        The group lent him more fresh clothes. And now he sat comfortable and clean, on a large, dangerously soft and cozy long leather sofa, in the living room right off the fancy kitchen, watching Russian sitcoms (difficult, as expected) with an acolyte of Levi’s named Mikasa, who, Eren said, was a yakuza princess in hiding.

        Levi and the scruffy dirty blond he’d introduced as Mike, one of his roommates, were in the kitchen talking in low, rustling Russian whispers across the island counter, under the stainless steel stove hood.

        Eren came wandering out of the kitchen with a silver mixing bowl of brownie batter and a spoon, from which he was licking an obvious taste. The Japanese girl—Mikasa—rattled something off in Russian that was not quite as fluid or lyrical as everyone else’s.

        “I’m eating dinner,” Eren argued back.

        Mikasa looked confused.

        “ _Uzhinayu!_ ” Eren sighed.

        Mikasa was adamant, about something.

        Eren heaved a sigh and disappeared into the kitchen again. When he came back, he threw a takeout pamphlet into Erwin’s lap and grumbled, “You okay with sushi for dinner, big guy?”

        Erwin smiled meekly. “It’s midnight,” he reminded.

        “Mm-hmm,” Eren confirmed.

        “Sure,” Erwin said, because what the fuck did it matter anymore? He needed to eat something. It wasn’t like he’d be getting any sleep.

        Levi called the young woman Mikasa into the kitchen. She left with a creak of the easy chair in which she’d been curled, drifting past Erwin with her open silk robe—obviously a modern fashion interpretation of the kimono—drifting out along her sides and revealing the tight, toned body underneath. Dragon and koi tattoos on smooth thighs, a cotton spaghetti-strap shirt and—panties, matching black. Nothing provocative, just casual like a man.

        Erwin smiled awkwardly, feeling guilty for looking. He closed his eyes. He leaned his head back on the sofa and just sat, listening to the sitcoms, the voices in the kitchen. He tried to go over the last thirty hours’ events—the spa. The warehouse. The hotel. The storage facility. The policeman. The industrial building on the outskirts of the city.

        A weight sagged down gently a cushion away from him. Erwin opened his eyes and looked without turning his head to Eren—he’d hoped it was Eren who sat beside him, and it was, thank God.

        No more parka; he was in a faded and vintage-looking sweatshirt, the crew neck kind Erwin hadn’t seen since at least the early nineties, and a pair of tapered track pants with snaps up and down the outsides of the legs. “Food’s ordered,” he said, and it made Erwin feel better to see someone else as rough and rundown as he felt. There weren’t bags under Eren’s eyes, but obvious dark circles and a dazed emptiness to his face that made him look fragile and soft like Erwin hadn’t thought a maybe-prostitute almost-murderer Russian criminal could look. His split lip looked much better, too.

        But Erwin’s eyes kept drifting to the scar on Eren’s throat, barely puckered, more a smooth line about as long as Erwin’s little finger and just vaguely lighter than Eren’s normal complexion. He wanted to ask about it. He decided not to.

        Eren in a parka, outside the spa. Eren whispering to Petra at the warehouse. Eren peaceful and asleep at Erwin’s hotel—running from gangsters in Erwin’s hotel. Eren taking guns from Levi at the storage facility. Eren, ready to shoot a policeman. The industrial building and Eren, on his knees for a stranger backed up against Levi’s car—

        The words felt chalky and dry on his tongue as Erwin blurted, “Men are animals. They were just going to let you do that, back there. At the—the place.”

        Eren’s eyes flashed over him. His face pinched in a gentle frown. “You would have, too,” he husked. “You want an affair.”

        Erwin rubbed at his face with one hand, dragging thumb and forefinger down the bridge of his nose. It was true; Eren was right on the money. Here he was trying to have an affair and that made him just as bad as those animals at the abandoned building.

        That, if anything, was a midlife crisis: realizing how problematic he was as an individual.

        Nile hadn’t mentioned that part, either.

        Spa. Warehouse. Hotel. Storage facility. Mafia business meeting. He felt so numb. How could he feel so numb after all that?

        “I shot someone,” Erwin whispered, staring at the Russian commercials dancing across the TV.

        Eren laughed an almost soundless laugh, an open-mouthed smile and an idle nod. “You shot someone,” he confirmed.

        “Oh my God,” Erwin said, shaking his head. “I hope he’s okay.”

        Eren shrugged. “He’ll be fine.”

        “And Levi was just… I didn’t think people could actually be like that outside of action movies, or…”

        “That wasn’t even his finishing move,” Eren joked—though Erwin wasn’t entirely sure he thought his own joke was funny. “He can crush a guy’s windpipes in one hit. They got off lucky tonight.”

        So much of this was beyond Erwin’s grasp. Just earlier in the night, Levi and Eren had been fighting like a married couple—the tension was still there, but—and then Levi had almost killed a group of men with no hesitation because one of them was going to take a blow job from Eren. A blow job Eren had _offered_ , no less!

        “Why did you shoot?” Eren asked.

        Erwin jumped. He was numb but he was still shaken, felt like his nerves were going haywire. He cleared his throat, a little fearful of the way Eren’s eyes burned into him.

        “You could have hit me, you know,” Eren said. “You could have shot me, too. On accident.”

        “I…” Erwin shook his head, rubbing his hands down his face again. He did not want to imagine that catastrophe. Levi probably would have killed him. Literally. Maybe tortured him first, then killed him. But Erwin would have been dead and no one would have known.

        “I don’t know, I just…” Erwin shrugged. “I was very upset you had to do that.”

        “I didn’t have to. It was my choice.”

        “Will the cops find out? That I shot him?”

        Eren snorted, but his eyes were still dark and stormy so the half-smirk on his face didn’t match. “They’re not going to go to the cops.”

        “I don’t understand how this is all even possible. This is like—Hollywood stuff.”

        Eren shifted around, pulling his feet up and stretching his legs out so one foot wagged against Erwin’s side as he got cozy against the arm of the couch. “People break the rules all the time,” he murmured. “Money and fear are powerful things. Look at your Wal Mart.”

        Erwin’s brow knotted deeply. “I’m sorry?”

        “Oh.” Eren rubbed at his face, too, a lot more blearily than Erwin did. “I mean Wall Street.”

        There was a knock, far away, at the apartment door. Erwin bristled, heart jumping to his throat. Oh God, he couldn’t take any more. He had no idea what to expect anymore. He—

        Mikasa brought in the sushi delivery and held it out for Eren to take.

        “ _Spasibo, dorogaya_ ,” Eren hummed, slid to the floor in front of the couch and started unpacking the food, checking a few Styrofoam boxes before handing one to Erwin.

        “Eat,” he said.

* * *

“Eren told me, that you want to have an affair?” Levi asked curiously, leaning in the doorway of one of the apartment’s bedrooms. The one Eren said was his (even though he never used it) and in which he had made up a blanket bed for Erwin on the floor.

        Erwin sat cross-legged on the blanket bed, flushing hot like he was a kid being lectured. A bitter smile tightened at his mouth as he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “Ah, well…” He shrugged, and it was visible in his posture that he was giving up being guarded. “Yes,” he confessed, meeting Levi’s stare with a look that was far more clear and resolute than Levi expected. “I’m just here on a business trip, but I was also hoping to have an affair.”

        “Hmm.” Levi shrugged, too. “Honesty is a good thing in a man, in my opinion.”

        “Well, in the spirit of being honest, I almost asked that woman you work with—Petra—to my hotel room.”

        Levi bristled, almost choked on a breath.

        Yes, he remembered. _Come back to my hotel with me?_

        His jaw tightened as he cut Erwin the American a sharp glance—saw him once again under the lights of the warehouse club, saw him full of shy passion and stifled desire, felt his body hard and fit, fitter than Levi expected of a businessman, beefy in a natural way, holding him in place as they’d danced—fingers flirting with the hem of his dress—desperate bruise of his kiss, up against the wall, coy erection at the fly of his pants and the way he could have lifted Levi off the floor in a simple embrace had Levi let him—

        Some rusty chemistry sparked, electric, through Levi’s nerves, fingertips to toes. His knuckles tightened on his own folded arms. He cleared his throat.

        “Is that so?” he edged out.

        Erwin nodded, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his legs. “I’m sorry if that’s inappropriate. I had no idea she—I had no idea I was around the mafia at that point.”

        “Hmm,” Levi said again, chills climbing the back of his neck. He wasn’t going to lie to himself; Mr. Erwin Smith was charmingly inept and quite surprisingly attractive, attractive in that polished, gentlemanly way, all raw manliness like broad shoulders and square jaw straining against domestication. He’d even looked rather _sexy_ in a borrowed high-collar coat tonight, cradling a handgun uneasily.

        Levi had two types, he’d learned over the years. The reckless Peter Pan wild child type he could take care of, like Eren. And the tall, classy, all man type like this Mr. Erwin, who wouldn’t argue against a glass of thousand-dollar wine and who could take care of _Levi_ if he needed to.

        Up until now, he hadn’t thought types like that actually existed. And Erwin Smith was certainly not confident enough to be the whole package, but he was close enough and Levi felt very defenseless to it.

        God damn it.

        “Can I ask you something?” Erwin prompted politely.

        Levi realized he’d just been staring in silence and it had made Erwin nervous. He cleared his throat, raised his brows. “ _Da,_ I suppose. _Vash vopros_?”

        Erwin frowned deeply. For a moment Levi doubted he’d ask at all, he looked so conflicted and reluctant. It was probably about Petra. No doubt it was about Petra. But then Erwin straightened up a little and said timidly, “How did Eren get that scar on his throat?”

        Levi’s heart sank; his face soured. He shifted his weight to one hip, slouching in the doorway and flashing Erwin a soft scowl. Erwin wasn’t wavering. Apparently, he was getting used to them all. Levi wasn’t sure he didn’t like that.

        “It’s a long story,” he muttered.

        “I have time,” Erwin replied, wholly without sarcasm.

        Levi considered it for a moment—the repercussions of telling Erwin. It was really no business of his, to go around telling people Eren’s past. It was not something he was inclined to do, anyway. He did not like to waste time with gossip and he knew well the necessity for brevity and anonymity. If someone didn’t need to know something, why tell them? Pointless.

        But Levi told him.

        “He used to work in one of Shadis’s best brothels, down in Moscow,” he husked. “Shadis handpicked him from a pimp in Yekaterinburg. Yes, like human trafficking. I don’t know all the details, but Shadis apparently saw some potential in him. Shadis tried Eren’s hand at everything, to figure out what else he is good at. Anyway—long story short, he had Eren running a whore house and some customer knocked him out, snatched him from the shop, raped him, slit his throat and ran. But he was a sick psycho who’d never slit someone’s throat before and he didn’t do it right, he botched the job. So the kid was still alive.”

        The words were thick and awful, scraping off Levi’s tongue. Erwin gawked at him, eyes wide, waiting for the end of the story.

        Levi cleared his throat. He shrugged. “I found him,” he said, voice low. “Found him like that, left to die, and I took him to a hospital. That was five years ago and ah, now here we are. He lives to be a pain in everyone’s ass another day.”

        Erwin smiled absently at that, at least getting Levi didn’t mean it cruelly. A heavy silence settled between them. It crawled on Levi’s skin. He really didn’t want to end the conversation on that note. He could smell it again, the dried blood—could hear the wheezing, the shrill gasps for air, feel the limp clammy hands flopping against his chest as he’d scooped Eren up, flutter of lashes over the whites of Eren’s eyes as he’d put him in the back of the car, covered him with his coat, peeled out with the sick bloom of burning rubber—

        “What is she like?”

        Erwin had fixed his eyes on Levi.

        “Who?” Levi snapped.

        “Petra,” Erwin murmured hesitantly, and Levi breathed a sigh of relief they’d gone back to a different topic.

        He raked a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes around the room before settling them on the view outside the glass balcony doors. He smirked dryly. He got it. He said, “You want to know just what sort of danger caught you in her web like a fly, right?”

        Erwin was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded, shamefaced.

        Levi reached out and idly ran a finger up and down the doorframe, scraping a nail along the jamb. Lashes lowered, he said, “She doesn’t talk—only to a few choice people. She is damn good at her job—why? She’s like a ghost. There, but not there. Uncatchable. Untouchable. Everyone knows there is no wrath like a woman’s wrath, and this woman can kill in ways other men never imagine. She doesn’t work for our boss.” Levi’s eyes veered over to Erwin, pointedly. “Which is why it is so dangerous Eren took you to her club.”

        Erwin’s face told Levi he was fantasizing about Petra—not in a despicable or lecherous way, but in a worshipful way. There went that chill again, up the back of Levi’s neck.

        “She’s into you,” Levi half-whispered, staring hard at Erwin. Erwin looked a little intimidated by it. Intimidated, and pleasantly shocked.

        Levi was pleasantly shocked, too.

        Because he wasn’t lying.

        “What?” Erwin husked.

        “Petra,” Levi said. “She told me herself.”

        Erwin looked like a begging dog, so hopeful and lost for words.

        Levi shrugged, tipping his head. “Oh, well. You’re going home, so—she’ll get over it. Besides, I don’t know how she feels about your having a wife. Why are you cheating, anyway?”

        Erwin choked over the words for a moment, face darkening and darkening until in a stuttering, desperate way, he blurted, “Her breath smells like wine-flavored toothpaste at night and that’s not even a real flavor. She watches ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ and wears ugly socks. She won’t go out without makeup on. Absolutely won’t. Sometimes I feel like we never should have gotten married right out of high school, like we’re two different people now, and _she’s_ the one who wanted to get a dog, but I love the damn thing a hundred times more than she ever will and thank _God_ she doesn’t want kids because if even the _dog_ knows she doesn’t love him, imagine how fucked up our children would be!”

        Levi blinked a few times, raising his brows.

        Erwin caught his breath and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m complaining about her,” he gasped. “I don’t usually do that. I’m sorry.”

        Levi fought the urge to smile, kept it a tight, private smirk as he heard Eren and Mikasa coming down the hall from the living room. He pushed off the doorframe and slipped his hands into his back pockets, peering at Erwin without lifting his head. Erwin still looked puzzled and guilty. Levi thought it was adorable.

        “Let me talk to Petra again,” he offered. “Maybe she’ll change her mind before you go.”

        Mikasa ducked past Levi into the room and climbed onto the queen bed, tucked hair behind one ear and tucked her favorite knife under the pillow. She never slept without it, Levi knew. It was always her first choice even when she had a gun under the bed ready to be grabbed.

        Eren lingered in Levi’s periphery like Levi was in his way.

        “So,” Levi said, snapping back into business mode. “Hanji is staying at Pixis’s tonight because they’re trying to track you down.” He exchanged a look with Eren over his shoulder, making sure Eren knew the _you_ he meant was _him_. “There’s no way I can keep her out of here past tomorrow morning. So here’s what we’re going to do. Get some sleep. Mikasa is guarding you. In the morning, she’ll take you two to my cabin. I’ll call you once I have plans secured. You do _nothing_ until I call you. Eren? _Ty slushaesh’_?”

        Eren looked up from his feet, frowning darkly. He nodded.

        Erwin seemed comforted by this plan of action.

        Eren brushed past Levi into the room. Levi was confused. Below his breath he muttered in Russian, “What are you doing, aren’t you coming to my room?”

        With his chin inclined and a lofty sniff, Eren cast Levi a vindictive glance and said, “No.”

        Levi heaved an irritated sigh and waved a sharp, dismissive hand. What the hell was the brat’s problem now? God damn—he wasn’t _inviting_ Eren, he was just so used to Eren insisting on sharing a bed, he was surprised to see him prancing into the room. Levi did not appreciate Eren making him out to be the needy one.

        “What the fuck ever,” Levi sighed again through his teeth. He nodded to Mikasa in thanks and saluted Erwin the American offhandedly. “Sleep tight, assholes.”

* * *

**{sestroretsk, karelian isthmus, 30 km north of st petersburg city center | friday morning.}**

Eren loved Levi’s Sestroretsk cabin. It was Levi’s safe haven—where he went to avoid being bothered—and Pixis said his holidays there, whether long weekends or months at a time, were to be defended at any cost. Being someone so indispensable and dependable as Levi, someone with Pixis under his thumb, really seemed to pay off.

        As it was, the cabin was not far from the main resorts of the town, tucked into the arbor and pines on a swell of land that was quite a respectable hill—front yard sloping down to the boathouse and the lapping waters of the Gulf of Finland. The backyard and only driveway wound back down to the road where it disappeared around another humble hill.

        “It’s snowing,” Erwin remarked in wonderment, looking like he really enjoyed the views as Mikasa drove them through Sestroretsk to the cabin. “It’s only October!”

        “Yeah,” Eren replied. “What did you expect?”

        “It’s just very pretty,” Erwin murmured more to himself it seemed, hunched in the backseat, arms draped loosely around his cramped knees as he leaned forward and his eyes roamed the world outside the car windows.

        The jostling cobbled road leading up the hill eventually gave way to packed dirt, and then the gravel of the drive.

        “Is that a graveyard down there?” Erwin asked, twisted to watch through the back window as they left the rest of the world behind.

        “Yes,” Eren said.

        After another minute or so the cabin peeked out of the trees, all bright whites, soft blues, folksy yellows—a real looming fairy tale cottage—and instantly Eren felt himself relax.

        It was a nippy, mother-of-pearl kind of morning as they got out and unpacked the few things they’d brought. Changes of clothes, the essentials, money, handful of weapons. Just in case.

        “This is definitely not what I expected when you said ‘cabin,’” Erwin said, towering over Mikasa and Eren with his head tipped back and his eyes eating up the house as the collar of his borrowed coat shifted along his throat.

        “Why?” Eren asked, cocking a brow. Mikasa unlocked the back door and motioned for them to wait outside until she made sure everything was okay. Eren was pretty confident everything was okay. Nobody would fuck with Levi’s house. Nobody would think Levi was helping him and Erwin out—Levi loved to pretend he hated Eren.

        “It’s like a gingerbread house, almost,” Erwin said, following Eren’s lead and stomping the light dusting of snow off his shoes at the door.

        “Like Baba Yaga, or like Hansel and Gretel?” Eren asked over his shoulder as he hung up his coat and hopped over into the kitchen to get the electric samovar going. “You want tea?”

        “This is the real Russian experience, huh?” Erwin asked, gingerly sipping at the hot tea and wandering absently around the cabin.

        Eren flopped down on the well-worn loveseat under the living room window and said around a yawn, “What’s that?”

        Erwin didn’t answer; he must not have heard. Eren lay on his stomach, arm dangling off the couch, watching Erwin drift around admiring the blond pine paneling and laminated beams, the flowery chandeliers and downhome ornaments on the walls, the bookshelves. He especially seemed to admire the detailed woodwork, all the Finnish Art Nouveau—and the little vintage cardstock Lenin poster, propped up amongst collected icons.

        “You like, eh?” Eren grinned absently, wagging his foot where he had it propped on the arm of the loveseat. “I’ll send Mikasa down to get groceries later, we can have the _kulebyaka_ or something for dinner.”

        Erwin nodded, eyes distant and hooded. He sat near the window, in his borrowed cable-knit turtleneck and chinos, holding his cup of tea to his chest and peering off out the window, watching the snow dance down through the old trees. Funny—Levi did the same kind of thing a lot, especially here in the cabin.

        Eren closed his eyes on the couch and walked the cabin in his mind, felt the creak of the blond steps underfoot going up the sectioned stairs, smelled the warm, sun-soaked sweetness of the rooms that faced the dawn, the comforting smell of rarely-used quilts and rarely-lit candles. Richness of coffee in the kitchen where Levi stared out the window. Balsam and juniper in the office where Levi curled on the couch in a knit throw blanket and watched movies. Cool press of the sheets and kiss of the breeze through open windows, in Levi’s bed upstairs, the bed that was old and creaked just as much when Eren jumped into it from the corner as when he was groping for the headboards for something to ground him as Levi’s mouth moved hot and possessive along his neck and shoulders and their bodies tangled slow, deep, drunk, cathartic.

        Eren opened his eyes a little, peered through his lashes at Erwin, at the snow falling outside the window past him. It wasn’t exactly sticking yet, but it drained the colors out of the world.

        If this was where he would spend his last hours as a Brother, so be it. This was peaceful. This was worth it. This place, far from everything else, full of happy memories, was where they could all always pretend they were normal, good people again for a while. And Eren liked that.

* * *

For the first few hours, it seemed wrong to Erwin that they just lounged around doing nothing—well, not _wrong_ , but irresponsible. The last two days had been such a whirlwind that letting his guard down left him feeling incredibly restless and paranoid. He didn’t want time to worry about the disarray in which his world had been left when Eren had yanked him out of it.

        But then about the time Mikasa returned from the store with the groceries and Eren put a Journey album on at Levi’s big stereo to keep them company as they prepared dinner, the feeling started to go away.

        While the homemade dough chilled, Mikasa elbowed Eren to start making crepes while she worked on the stuffing. Suddenly she whipped around, gave Erwin a hard once-over, and demanded, “ _Umyeyite gotovit’ losos’?_ ”

        Erwin blinked a few times in response.

        Eren realized she’d asked in Russian and looked up from the crepes, sucking some batter off his thumb. “Mikasa, _on ne ponimaet_ — _amerikanyets_.”

        Mikasa’s eyes widened and she looked at Erwin again, sharply, but still something like a deer in headlights. “Sorry,” she said in tight, heavily accented English, complete with a little bob of the head.

        Eren licked another bit of batter from his middle knuckle and translated her previous demand: “Erwin, you know how to cook the salmon?”

        They gave him wine to poach the salmon with, and it felt good to actually be of use. It was kind of homey to make dinner together. Felt comfortable and familiar. He clung to it. He sat at the island counter on a bar stool sipping one of the screwdrivers Eren made them halfway through, laughing at the way Eren and Mikasa sang to _Wheel in the Sky_ in slightly off-kilter but perfectly on-pitch English, dancing around the kitchen waving and rolling in their palms little strips of dough with which they decorated the top of the dinner pie to look like a woven wicker basket.

        They wound up playing a card game called Dead Man’s Draw at a low table in the living room after dinner, Journey switched out for Nirvana. Mikasa knelt on a throw pillow, gave one to Erwin to sit cross-legged while Eren just sprawled on the tasseled carpet nursing a bottle of honey beer. It actually wasn’t too bad, very spicy and mead-like. Erwin kind of liked it.

        It was a little unreal, how peaceful it all was. It felt like cheating. Spa. Gunshots. Warehouse. Hotel. Storage facility. Shooting a man from the roof of an abandoned building. Now, finally, Erwin kept forgetting to be worried—about work, about his wallet, about his _wife_. What was going on in the rest of the world? Had anyone contacted authorities about him yet? Did anyone realize he was missing? How could he be so _relaxed_ right now—feeling _happy_? He had no idea. He’d found himself in a completely different world, detached and disconnected. He almost didn’t want it to end. He was afraid of what awaited him once Levi got him out of here, the mess he’d have to clean up.

        The _boringness_ that was left.

        For now—this was really nice.

* * *

**{levi’s cabin, sestroretsk | friday night.}**

The phone rang.

        Mikasa set her beer down and stood, but she didn’t go anywhere. She just looked at Eren in that way she only looked at Eren, and Eren sighed softly, climbing off the couch and crossing the living room to pause the music before answering the phone.

        “Hello?”

        “ _Put me on speaker_.”

        It was Levi. Eren glanced over his shoulder at Mikasa, standing with her shoulders drawn, her eyes intent, and Erwin, on the edge of his pillow seat with his drink hanging halfway to his mouth, a pinch of uncertainty to his brow.

        Eren hit the speaker button. “Okay,” he said.

        Eren held the phone in one palm, other hand in his back pocket, toes curling and uncurling nervously on the floor. Mikasa stood rigid, hackles raised. And Erwin just sat there, running his thumb around the mouth of his beer, face dimpled like he was two breaths away from a comical _gulp_. Levi’s voice filled the quiet living room, which was warm and softly-lit now that early night had slithered through the trees and settled on the light snow.

        “ _Eren, you know where the cash is. Take five thousand—only five thousand. Tomorrow you fly out from Moscow_ —”

        “ _Moscow_ , Lyovushka?” Eren whined.

        “ _Tikha, Eren, zatknis’_. _You’ll take the Sapsan to Moscow and fly to Paris. I gave Erwin Smith’s passport to Mikasa. I have a room secured at Le Meurice. Petra will meet you there once she’s done with business._ ”

        Eren snorted. Of _course_ Petra would meet them there. Of course she would, because why not after the way she’d danced with Erwin the American the other night? Well, wouldn’t _Petra_ be upset when she arrived and it was just Erwin at the hotel, because Eren was gone, and Eren would not be back.

        “And then what?” Eren snapped.

        “ _You, Mikasa, and Petra will see Erya safely off on a flight to New York, and Petra and Mikasa will bring you back to me in time for us to get Pixis from the airport._ ”

        “That’s so much trouble,” Erwin murmured, looking frantically to Eren.

        “Levi,” Eren said quickly and tensely in Russian, holding the phone close to his mouth, “are they only after me or are they after him, too?”

        Levi answered back in quick, accusatory Russian: “ _Well, since you told them he’s an associate of Kenny’s, of course they’re after him. They’re pissed and they don’t know what to believe with you. Sometimes I don’t even know what to believe with you. They’re frantic to get ahold of you before Pixis gets home. The only reason you’re going to Paris with him, you and Mikasa, is because I’d rather be safe than sorry, God forbid we send him off alone and they get eyes on him without you._ ”

        “That makes sense,” Eren murmured back, glumly.

        “Don’t worry, Levi,” Mikasa called from her spot near Erwin, her body a little more relaxed, arms crossed loosely with her fingers drifting gracefully at her elbows.

        “ _Eren_ ,” Levi snapped, voice raspy through the phone connection. “ _This is not a holiday for you. Do you get that?_ ”

        “Yeah,” Eren said curtly. “What time is our train tomorrow?”

        “ _Five-forty a.m_.”

        “Jesus, Levi!”

        “ _Call as soon as you land in Paris_.”

        Mikasa crossed the living room in a few short strides, took the phone from Eren and hung up. He wasn’t very good at being pithy on business calls.

 

END CH. V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translation.** please excuse me for sucking.
> 
> *** uzhinayu:** ужинаю, _[i'm] eating dinner_  
>  *** spasibo, dorogaya:** спасибо, дорогая, _thank you, dear_  
>  *** da:** да, _yes_  
>  *** vash vopros:** ваш вопрос, _your question?_   
> *** myshka:** мышка, _mousie_  
>  *** ty slushaesh':** ты слушаешь, _you listening?_  
>  *** umyeyite gotovit’ losos’:** умеете готовить лосось, _you know how to cook salmon?_  
>  *** on ne ponimaet:** он не понимает, _he doesn't know_  
>  *** amerikanyets:** американец, _american_  
>  *** tikha:** тихо, _quiet_  
>  *** zatknis’:** заткнись, _shut up_
> 
> *** sestroretsk:** i took some liberties here with precise locations; in case you want to imagine it, here's the cabin: http://www.luxuryestate.com/p10063726-luxury-home-for-sale-saint-petersburg


	6. Bohemian Rhapsody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eren sings bohemian rhapsody so i think i’m clever and title the chapter with that. also erwin steals a car.

**{levi’s cabin, sestroretsk | friday night.}**

There was a humble piano in the den behind the living room. Erwin played a few things he remembered—some Beethoven, some Chopin, the overdone stuff. Nobody made a face when he messed up, and at least they listened unlike Marie. Mikasa even sat beside him and played the high notes; apparently, she was just as classically trained, if not more so. She smiled at Erwin faintly behind some soft dark hair that fell loose from behind her ear.

        She went upstairs at around midnight. She stopped and said something to Eren from the second section of the stairs, frowning down at him where he leaned, pouting, against the lower banister post.

        “Is she okay?” Erwin asked when Eren rejoined him at the coffee table, shuffling cards for another round of their little game.

        “She said not to stay up too late,” Eren reported gleefully. “It’s fine. We can sleep on the train tomorrow. Are you excited to be going home?”

        “I don’t know.” Erwin sighed. Eren was quiet. He looked up and flinched back to find Eren staring at him in a strange, hard way. Erwin just shrugged. He didn’t quite know how to explain it. He smiled faintly, but felt like it knotted up his face. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he surmised. “Why don’t you turn the music down so we don’t keep Ms. Mikasa up?”

        Eren turned the volume down on Queen’s _Night At the Opera_ and made a detour into the kitchen to dig around in his coat a little bit. When he came back and plopped down opposite Erwin again, he threw that little bag of white powder to the table with their card game. He tossed back the last of his second honey beer and said, “You want some, Captain America?”

        Erwin shook his head, smiling—genuinely, he realized. He could feel it. The beer was helping. “No, thank you,” he replied. “I witnessed a hit job, I danced with a mafia queen, I almost let you give me a blow job the other night, I shot a man in the arm—but I don’t think I can do drugs with you, Eren.”

        Eren laughed, utterly shameless. Head thrown back, eyes tiny crescent moons of dark lashes, rocking back a little with his hands on his crossed ankles. He leaned forward against the table again, still curled in a soft grin. “Okay, Erya.”

        “Erya,” Erwin echoed, feeling the nickname in his own mouth and swirling the beer at the bottom of his bottle. “What can I call you, hmm?”

        “Whatever you want, babe.”

        “Oh, Eren, don’t…” Erwin laughed, too. He leaned back on one arm and watched Eren fiddle with the bag of drugs—cocaine, he guessed, not that he’d ever done it himself, or ever really seen someone do it. Eren chopped at the white powder with the side of a playing card, swept it into a little ridge and insufflated it right there, fast and clean. He leaned back again, rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, sniffled long once, twice. Rubbed at his nose and cleared his throat and issued a satisfied little sigh.

        “How old are you?” Erwin husked.

        Eren clucked his tongue, gathering the cards to shuffle. “Twenty-two, love. You?”

        Erwin chuckled. “Ah… Thirty-six. You’re a baby.”

        Eren chuckled, too. “Six years older than Levi. Old man. I’m not a baby.”

        “You calling me an old man proves you’re a baby.”

        “Whatever.”

        Erwin’s gaze roamed Eren as Eren went back to shuffling the cards, dealing them out. His tousled hair, his soft absentminded smile, his bouncing knees and the sudden restlessness of his dilated amber eyes—the scar on his throat, above the collar of the sweatshirt from last night.

        Only twenty-two years old.

        Before he could stop himself, Erwin said, “Levi told me what happened.”

        Eren looked up without lifting his head, still smiling in that dazed, distracted way. But while restless, his eyes were sharp and clear. “Hmm?” he hummed, brows raising slowly.

        Erwin gestured, at Eren, at his own neck. He cleared his throat.

        It took Eren a moment, but then he got it like an electric jolt. He sat up straight and gave Erwin a disgruntled, rather betrayed look, then slowly wilted into a dark and guarded stare.

        “Oh,” he murmured, mouth barely moving. “Levi did,” he echoed, like he needed to say it himself to believe it.

        Around a sip of beer, Erwin said, “I’m so sorry.”

        “Why?” Eren’s face pinched, lip curling.

        Erwin opened his mouth but nothing came out at first. He had no idea why this weighed so heavily on him suddenly. His throat was raw, the words gravelly as he explained, “That something like that…happened to you.”

        It was a little eerie, to be sitting with someone who should have died. Maybe it was just that not until here and now, bringing it up, in a moment of tentative peace, did it really sink in as real. He didn’t even care what kind of Stockholm syndrome this was, he didn’t care that this young man before him was a prostitute almost-murderer criminal, what had happened to him was _not right._ It infuriated Erwin in a slow, boiling way—that someone could do something like that to another person, ruin them and leave them to die, a person so disenfranchised, so wrongly treated, and still so genuine.

        Maybe it was the cocaine, or maybe just a courageous lack of resentment, but Eren wasn’t blue about it for long. “Yeah,” he said. “The world, it’s fucked up. But everything happens for a reason.”

        Erwin felt inadequate, suddenly. Nothing in his life was deserving of complaint next to this rabbit hole into which he’d fallen. “What about the others?” he prompted gently. “Do they all have crazy survivor stories like that, too?”

        “The others?”

        “Your friends—er, accomplices?”

        “My brothers.” Eren drummed his fingers, rubbed at his nose, sniffled twice more. He made a little face and then started to laugh at himself. “Sorry,” he said. “Bad taste. Hey, come on, I always need a cigarette when the bad taste starts.”

        They stood on one of the gingerbread house covered porches, where the cold ached to the bones of Erwin’s fingers so he tucked them under his arms and huddled deep into his coat. The wind swirled thin snow in little bursts and clouds at the corners of the porch, where the moonlight caught some of the flakes like diamonds. From here, Erwin could see the velvety black expanse of the Gulf, beyond the shadows of leafless trees and skinny pines.

        “Armin, I have known him since I was a schoolboy,” Eren divulged, winter breath and cigarette smoke churning together. Erwin held a hand out for a cigarette. Eren graciously gave him the lighter, too. Shivering and shifting from foot to foot, Eren went on: “Everything you have heard on your BBC or whatever about here after ‘ _le grande_ collapse’ is true. All of a sudden, things were great and wonderful but at the same time terrible. Everyone’s a criminal and everyone’s broke or drunk and government kept starting and stopping like a bad car engine. We even still had a Soviet subsidy on our apartment, you know.”

        Erwin clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering, cradling the borrowed cigarette between two fingers.

        Eren laughed. “Armin… He’s really good at planning things and memorizing blueprints, and of course certain people find that useful. I was good at other things, like sex. Plus, I was—how to say it? ‘Needle sick.’”

        Erwin’s brow knotted. “I’m sorry?”

        Eren made a little gesture near his forearm that after a moment Erwin realized was a mime of intravenous injection. A chill zipped down his spine and he looked worriedly back up to find Eren just staring, raising his brows, unashamed in a rather barren way.

        “I did a lot of crazy things,” he husked. “To get fixed. I mean, to have a fix. It’s easy to steal from people who only live for sex or dope. But—” He cut off and ripped his eyes away, shrugged, shook his head. Muttered, “ _Tak, ne znayu_ …” He took two back-to-back drags off his cigarette and went on: “Soon it was like—Armin had his business and I had mine, whatever mine was, which became a lot more complicated as time went on and half of it, once I got business partners, I don’t remember because I wasn’t the boss anymore. I was just… Never mind. Armin and me, we kind of lost track of each other for a few years. But then—you know, what Levi told you, _kogda—when_ I got with Levi, he said this thing when he burned my fingers…”

        A jolt snapped through Erwin. “I’m sorry?” he said again.

        Eren stared at him like he was an idiot. “Burned my fingers,” he repeated slowly.

        Erwin pleaded with a look for Eren to explain.

        Eren held his free hand up for Erwin to inspect for proof as he said, “We’ve all burnt our fingerprints off, Erya. So no one can track us.”

        “Oh my God, that’s—very brilliant, but—and they didn’t grow back? The skin didn’t grow back that way?”

        “No, that skin is gone. Kind of cool, right? And Levi said, ‘We burn our old selves away,’ and he said, ‘Blood of the covenant is thicker than blood in the veins.’ And I was like, I have to find Armin. I spent weeks trying to find him but I found him, I begged Pixis to bring him in. And he did.”

        Erwin smoked quietly, at the moment loving how deliciously dizzy the nicotine made him—like the sudden jarring prospect that these people, these professional criminals, were not monsters at all. They were not operating on a lack of qualms or humanity. They were all just surviving, in their own little world of right and wrong, where they were self-made heroes. And how fucked up was _that_ in juxtaposition with the world he knew as normal?

        “Jean…” Eren clucked his tongue a little, looking around the porch. He was not as busy as he had been ten or fifteen minutes ago, coming down from his high apparently, but he still spoke a mile a minute. “Jean fought down in Chechnya for like, not even a year. He said it was bullshit. He came back and I met him at a party. He said, ‘I’m an underground boxer,’ and I said, ‘Can I have some money?’ He said, ‘Teach me how to do that, how to not feel bad hurting someone,’ and I was like, ‘I’ll do things if you just give me the money.’”

        The more Eren spoke, the heavier Erwin felt inside—cold and hollow, but heavy.

        “Jean kept boxing in illegal clubs,” Eren explained, “and we kept meeting at parties but then I left that scene—Shadis’s scene. When Marco found Jean at one of those underground matches up here in Petersburg, I was like, yes, grab him, he’s kind of a badass, so Marco brought him home and now he’s ours.”

        “And Mikasa is Japanese…” Erwin said, trying to stay abreast and show he was paying attention.

        Eren laughed. “Mikasa—she’s under our protection, actually. It’s one of our safety nets with the mafia in Japan. _Eyo otyets sprashiv_ —er, sorry, I did it again. Her daddy asked us to guard her because he’s in debt. Did you know Japanese mafia, they’ll cut off your finger, one joint at a time. It’s like, a marker of shame. Or something. Ask Mikasa. She’ll tell you. Mike—I don’t really know about Mike. Marco is Pixis’s nephew. And Hanji and Levi have been working together a long time. I think they met on a job, actually. Hanji has a really high IQ. She likes brain science, mostly psychology. Her parents wanted her to be an Olympic gymnast. She ended up running away and she started stripping, I love her stripping stories, they’re the best.”

        Erwin choked on a drag from his cigarette. That woman, with the dark hair and the wild voice—a stripper? A former stripper, at least?

        Eren looked at him sideways like he didn’t understand why that had been startling. He went on, unfazed: “She’s like our mother. She’s our mother.”

        “So not the Olympics, not psychology, not stripping, but the mafia.”

        “Her husband dragged her into it.”

        “Husband?”

        “Yeah, Levi killed him six years ago.”

        Erwin’s longing to hear about Levi utterly bypassed the gravity of that statement. He waited, on pins and needles. Eren didn’t say anything. Erwin didn’t know why he was dying to know about Levi, but he was. Maybe he just wanted to know how someone like Levi came to be—the worst kind of criminal, the kind who made a life like this look so God damn romantic. Petra, too—but if Levi didn’t know a lot about Petra, Eren surely knew nothing at all.

        Erwin stubbed out his cigarette and threw it off the side of the porch like he’d observed from Eren.

        “Are you still going to leave them?” he husked. “They seem to care about you a lot.”

        Eren snorted, moving back towards the door into the house. “Yeah,” he snapped. “I know. But I’m done. I’ll disappear in Paris before Petra gets there.”

        Before, Erwin had been relieved to hear that, sort of proud in that judgmental outsider way. But now he wasn’t so sure he wanted Eren to leave.

        He followed after Eren, grateful for the way the heat inside swallowed them up as they peeled out of their coats and headed back downstairs to their forgotten card game. “But everyone seems to want you to stay,” he insisted. “They’re all willing to do so much to keep you! Don’t take that for granted! Not many people know what that feels like—to really belong somewhere like that.”

        “Do so much to keep me?” Eren uttered half a laugh, harsh and resentful. He just kept stomping lazily down the stairs, hand trailing the banister. “Belong, huh? Belong. Really, it’s just that I owe Pixis my life for him taking me in. Everyone owes Pixis. That’s family, eh?”

        Eren stopped short at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the banister as he turned halfway to level a hard, hooded stare on Erwin. Erwin stopped, too, realizing maybe a little too late that what he’d said was over the line, at the least very unfair. It came from somewhere jealous he hadn’t been aware of until this moment—jealous of that belonging, jealous of people who cared as much as Eren’s criminal family. But maybe he was trying too hard to apply some sort of idealistic intimacy and goodwill to it. Maybe that was wrong of him.

        Eren glared like he was about to say something else. But then he just sighed and went back to their card game, saying, “This is one of my favorite Queen songs!”

        _Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality…_

        They picked up their round of the game in a sore, quiet way. Eren didn’t look angry anymore, just sort of deflated. But Erwin felt like there was still more to know. He cleared his throat then asked, “You and Levi…?”

        Eren’s eyes danced back up to Erwin’s in the middle of his playing turn. “I and Levi what?”

        “You’re dating?” Erwin finally dragged the words out.

        He had one gay friend now, back at home, and of course the guy’s husband, and in high school he’d been close to being in the same circle as one of the only out homosexuals in the entire school system, but—all of that felt like hollow primetime parody after what he’d witnessed between Eren and Levi. The way they weirdly enough harmonized with each other whether arguing in the car or fighting amateur thugs in a dark industrial yard.

        Eren sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “He saved my life,” he said. “And we slept together sometimes.”

        Erwin didn’t entirely believe that was all it was. Maybe it was more that professional criminals didn’t use the term _dating_.

        Avoiding the subject, Eren slid down to lay on his back with his feet propped up on the table, toes curling, arms thrown loosely over his head as without fear he sang along to the music that had blended into background noise until then:

        “ _Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he’s dead… Mama! Oooh, ooooh!_ ”

        Erwin almost choked on his drink, the cough dissolving into a litany of chuckles. There was something really endearing about Eren writhing slowly on the floor to the song—in one moment like a drug addict in withdrawal, the next moment sensual and graceful. Yes, something endearing, something utterly bewitching and encouraging. That someone could be so free to be themselves, to just be in the moment and nowhere else. Tragic and hopeful in stunning unison.

“ _Sends shivers down my spine, body’s aching all the time…_ ”

        Erwin tapped a finger on the neck of his beer, smiling faintly, singing along below his breath as Eren threw his hands in the air and cried, “ _Mama, ooooh! I don’t want to die! Sometimes wish I’d never been born at all!_ ”

        How very odd and existential, to look at Eren, a man ten years his junior, and realize that he, a mildly insane but wholly genuine ex-junkie prostitute murderer in the Russian mafia, was more charged with raw, beautiful life than anyone else Erwin knew.

        _Slept together sometimes_ , Eren had said about Levi, talking in the past tense. He was really committed to leaving, then. It still made Erwin’s heart ache a little.

        As Eren sat up, a little flushed and disheveled from his one-man show, Erwin considered telling him that, from an outsider’s perspective, it seemed very rare for anyone to ever actually escape organized crime alive. But it felt like an incredibly naïve, unsympathetic, and rather _lame_ thing to say so he just said, “I love your accent.”

        Eren blushed, eyes widening a little. He muttered something under his breath in his native tongue, all flustered and chuckling like a girl with a crush. And then again avoiding the honesty, as the real rock and riffs of the Queen song launched, Eren flopped back down again and started tossing his head around and pumping his fists in the air and tapping his feet on the sturdy table.

        Erwin nodded his head to the beat and grinned. Felt like he was a kid again, in Nile’s attic bedroom sprawled around on fringe carpet trying to pretend he did not hate the smell and taste of marijuana as much as he did, as they passed around a joint and bobbed their heads to music their parents despised.

        _So you think you can love and leave me to diiieee! Oh, baby… Don’t do this to me, baby…_

        Erwin was tired and a little buzzed and still so dazed from the last two days that he didn’t really have energy left to filter the things he said. So he asked, “Are you in love with him?”

        Eren sat up sharply, but didn’t answer. He didn’t ask who Erwin meant. They both knew Erwin meant Levi. Through the energetic song, he just glared at Erwin again, like a child who needed a nap. That was enough of an answer for Erwin. He chuckled meekly and started his game turn. “I miss being in love,” he muttered to himself.

        Eren snorted. “Says the man looking for an affair.”

        Erwin’s heart gave a little spark. Looking, yes, but failing. He gripped his cards, staring at them but not really seeing them. He wished he could call Nile and ask his advice. Then again, he didn’t. Nile probably wouldn’t have a single word of advice about a situation like this because Nile was not all he talked himself up to be. A restless sort of anxiety crept in on Erwin then, numbed by the beer but strong enough to hijack his thoughts. He was going home tomorrow. Back to English, back to normal, back to sterile, safe, uneventful routine, and a new midlife crisis about utterly failing at having a midlife crisis. He’d failed everything he’d come here for, actually. He’d missed his work conference and he hadn’t had an affair.

        So far.

        Erwin set his hand of cards down and waited for Eren to look him in the eye. When Eren finally did, it was a little coy, like he’d said something wrong but wasn’t ready to apologize for it, that smile still playing across his soft mouth.

        “How much do you charge an hour?” Erwin asked. “Out of curiosity, of course.”

        Eren’s face dimpled. He looked at him like he didn’t understand the question at first. And then it seemed to dawn on him and he cracked up, hunching low against the table with a string of devious chuckles. “Oh, Captain America, at this point I’d fuck you for free.”

        “Okay.” Erwin finished off his beer and slammed it down to the table. “At this point,” he echoed, “it’s my last resort and worth a shot.”

* * *

Back in the executive suite in the fancy Moika Street hotel, Erwin had gotten hard very fast but now Eren wondered how much of that had been leftover sensitivity from dancing with Levi in a dress at the warehouse.

        “Eren?”

        Eren rolled his eyes around to meet Erwin’s, but Erwin wasn’t looking at him. “Hmm?”

        “Why are you so willing to sleep with me?”

        Because he was used to it. Because he wanted Levi to be angry. Because… The question left a little weight on him, but he tried to shrug it off. “Because I can, I guess,” he whispered against Erwin’s jawline.

        “Because you define yourself with sex?”

        Eren stopped. He leaned back to give Erwin a harsh look, felt the wrinkle in his nose as his lip curled a little. Erwin Smith was not very good at bedroom talk, it seemed. He wasn’t sure what Erwin wanted him to say in reply. He had no idea what to say in reply. It was a very complicated question that felt over his head right now—too much to think about.

        “Have you ever had sex with another man before?” Eren asked instead.

        “No,” Erwin said, smiling all pinched and goofy like the question was silly but like he was also relieved for the change in topic.

        “I’ll teach you how to do it,” Eren offered, and he thought it was kind of amusing how casual this all was. He didn’t even have to flip on the dirty charm. It was just happening.

        Erwin settled back with his hands in his lap on the big sofa under the window, where the snow was starting to lace and spider-web on the glass—too warm not to soak down into the earth before sticking, but cold enough to turn to ice.

        “Marie would never say something like that,” Erwin murmured, eyes hooded and smile fading as he let Eren push his knees apart gently, climb up lazily to straddle his lap, harmless friction of denim upon chinos.

        Eren wagged his feet against Erwin’s shins. “Who’s Marie?”

        “My wife.”

        Eren laughed. “You are a mess, you know?”

        He tried almost everything he could think of—nibbling and kissing at Erwin’s earlobes and neck and jawline as his hands worked Erwin’s pants open, swirled his fingers over his abdomen and the soft line of blond hair between his navel and the waistband of his boxers. Rolled his body, stroked and fondled and gasped and whispered sweet things in Russian along the shell of Erwin’s ear. He ground his hips down and arched his back like a cat and combed his hands through Erwin’s lovely blond hair.

        Erwin the American caught Eren’s hips in a firm grip and leaned away from his searching mouth. “Maybe we should try kissing first,” he suggested.

        They kissed and Erwin didn’t seem totally displeased by it. His shoulders were strong and tight under Eren’s hands, his body tempting under that cable knit sweater. Erwin tasted like honey beer and metal. His hands moved under Eren’s thighs, propped him up a little as Eren reached back down for Erwin’s dick. He was well-groomed, anyway. And ticklishly soft.

        “Marie hasn’t sat on my lap and kissed me like that in years,” he said.               

        Eren nodded, because he was ten minutes into a really thoughtful hand job and Erwin’s cock was still pretty much dead weight in his palm.

        Erwin sighed. “But it’s just not working, Eren. I’m sorry.”

        Eren heaved an impatient sigh and swung up off Erwin’s lap. “Good Lord,” he said, laughing as he fixed his ruffled sweatshirt and jeans. He’d never imagined it possible a man could suck so much at having an affair.

* * *

It all happened so fast that Erwin really did not understand what it was that had happened at all.

        He went to use the restroom, feeling very content and very ready to lay down for a few hours of sleep before having to catch the earliest train to Moscow. Never before had he thought he’d be able to run so well on so little sleep, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to test the boundaries of such an accomplishment. He was at least a decade too late for that, he decided.

        Out the bathroom window, he could see down the hill to the water, the little hut of a boathouse backed up against the shore. It seemed like a different kind of otherworldliness from the empty, half-dark lot of the St Petersburg storage facility, out there in the silent unmoving night amongst the trees and the fading snow. The night was alive, watching them. It felt all the more unreal and disconnected because this was a different country, these were international waters and Russian trees and Eastern European stars.

        But it was so peaceful and beautiful. The pines and arbor that guarded the property reached gently for the cabin, dripping moonlight and shadows. The slow night wind kicked up snow around soft tracks winding from the trees towards the side of the house, so delicately and gracefully.

        Wait.

        Erwin stopped with his hands still under the hot water at the sink, squinting out the window at the tracks. A trail of prints in the lingering kiss of snow—certainly there were wolves out here, but he hadn’t heard any howling or anything, and they weren’t small enough to be deer tracks. They were—

        _Boot prints_.

        Erwin’s breath clotted with his heart in his throat. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and a stabbing dread sank into his spine, branched out to bristle his limbs cold and tense.

        He turned off the water and dried his hands on a nice towel. Slowly he opened the bathroom door and stood in the threshold, staring at the dark hall, where the lights from the kitchen and living room couldn’t fully reach.

        “Eren?” he called, and then he thought maybe he shouldn’t have done that. Look at him, he was learning so much from his captors. Okay, so they weren’t captors. But…

        Perhaps it was Levi, come to join them. Certainly if it was Eren’s friends from the hotel, they would be making more of a commotion—they seemed rather disorganized and impatient. Or maybe Eren himself had snuck out, so easily distracted as he was.

        No, after the last few days, it had become increasingly difficult to fool himself at all anymore. The multiple tracks had led to the house, not from it.

        The only sounds in the cabin were the ticking of the cuckoo clock from the living room, the hum of the heating system, the ringing in Erwin’s ears and the faint melody of the Queen CD.

        He moved slowly and cautiously out from the bathroom and turned the corner between the kitchen and the living room, talking himself into believing that he’d find Eren fallen asleep on the sofa, finally having worn himself out.

        Eren was certainly unconscious—limp like a coat draped over the tight muscular arm of a dark-haired man Erwin did not recognize from anywhere in the last two days. Between the fireplace and this nervous-looking dark-haired man was a shorter but more powerfully built blond man, a sneer cut into his hard, strong face like into cold stone. It was almost a smirk, icy blue eyes flashing. They were not the angry associates Erwin knew from the other day.

        “ _Zdrastvyte_ ,” Erwin stuttered. “ _Kto—kto_ , uh—”

        Something hard and sharp hit Erwin on the back of the head and then everything went quiet.

* * *

**{sestroretsk, levi’s cabin | early saturday morning.}**

When Erwin opened his eyes, he almost didn’t remember where he was. The living room light that last night had been so soft was now violent on his eyes. But it was still pre-sunrise black outside. He thought he heard a single bird chirp out there, maybe another. His head ached, but mostly his neck hurt more, and then it dawned on him that he was tied to a chair in the middle of Levi’s cabin living room and he’d drooled on the nice sweater loaned to him.

        Mikasa the yakuza princess slapped him hard across the face.

        “Yes, okay!” Erwin sputtered. “I’m awake, damn it!”

        Mikasa hissed something in Japanese and gave his face another decisive hit just for spite. As she started ripping him out of the chair, the tiny tight Japanese swelled into a slightly frantic outrage, a native tongue panic. There was a ratty piece of duct tape on the floor. Still quite bleary and disoriented, Erwin grunted, “Was that on my mouth?”

        There was no reply. No jab, no laughter, no teasing glance—because there was no Eren and Mikasa the yakuza princess spoke more Russian or Japanese than English.

        _Shit._ Eren—

        “They took them!” Erwin choked out, beseeching Mikasa from the chair. “They—I don’t know who—I haven’t seen them before—”

        She looked at him like Erwin imagined a wolf might look at a rival before a battle for dominance. Except Erwin was hardly a worthy opponent, so he felt more like prey. Thank God she hadn’t just left him here like this.

        Mikasa stormed off, presumably to gather her things and leave him now that he was awake and freed. But did she even know who’d taken Eren? And she’d bring Erwin with, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t abandon him?

        Her voice echoed from upstairs, Russian this time. She was on the phone, Erwin guessed. She was furious.

        Eren’s coat was still on the stair railing, where he’d left it after he and Erwin had shared cigarettes on the upstairs porch.

        Stumbling a little—his bearings were all askew—Erwin made a beeline for the coat and shoved his hands into the pockets. He had never thought it possible to be so afraid and yet so focused at the same time, but here it was. Stripped of emotion. Gum, gun, cigarettes, drugs, phone from the storage facility. God, his head hurt.

        He turned in a few staggering circles, not really knowing what he looked for but not caring, either. His thoughts raced so fast, it was like he thought nothing. Strangely enough, he wasn’t shaking, but the knot in his stomach was making him sick and he was suddenly terrified of the vast, ghastly unknown this unexpected turn of events opened up before him.

        How would he make it to the train? How would he make it to Paris, and from Paris—home? He had no money, just his real passport and a fake passport. He could not speak the language here. He was starting to worry he was in a little deeper than he’d known, and now he was stranded.

The car keys sat on the kitchen counter, between the wine and vodka from yesterday.

        Mikasa was still upstairs, stomping around, snapping things in Russian.

        Very slowly, Erwin crossed to the kitchen. He lifted the keys as quietly as he could, thumb tucked into the ring, keys folded up into his palm. He stood for a moment, staring wide-eyed and cold at the granite countertop. His throat was tight and dry, heart throbbing hard in his chest.

        What could he possibly do?

        He could contact Levi. He could beg Mikasa to tote him along. He could go to the police. He could just leave. He could go to the airport and call his bank, call Nile, have him get online and buy Erwin the first ticket home, never mind the price.

        Erwin swallowed hard but the thick, raw feeling of his throat almost made him gag with it. Mikasa was back to raging in Russian instead of short, terse interjections.

        Tense with electric adrenaline but somehow also numb with shock, Erwin scooped Eren’s jacket off the stair railing and went outside and got into the car. He stuck the key in the ignition, turned the engine.

        And without looking back, he jostled out of the yard and started careening down the road towards civilization.

  

**END CH. VI**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translation.** please excuse how much i suck.
> 
>  *** kogda** : когда, _when_  
>  *** tak, ne znayu** : так, не знаю, _ahh, [i] don't know_  
>  *** eyo otyets sprashiv—** : её отец спрашив—, _her dad ask—_  
>  *** zdrastvyte** : здраствуйте, _hello_ (formal)  
>  *** kto** : кто, _who_
> 
>  *** sestroretsk** : i took some liberties here with precise locations; in case you want to imagine it, here's the cabin: http://www.luxuryestate.com/p10063726-luxury-home-for-sale-saint-petersburg


	7. Petra.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Titaniki get a flat, but at least they took the duct tape off Eren's mouth. Erwin sees Petra and demands she take him to Levi. So she does, in the Belmond Grand Hotel, where Levi strips of a pencil skirt and pumps and gun hidden at the small of his back while Mikasa brings him up to date on the situation over the phone. And Erwin discovers when he runs his hands up Levi's chest below the underwire of a lacy black bra that one of Levi's nipples is pierced, which is pretty hardcore -- and Erwin has never used the word 'hardcore' before.

**{nevsky prospekt/griboyedov canal embankment, st petersburg | early saturday morning.}**

Levi stopped at one of the coffeehouses on the Nevsky. It was only a quarter to five in the morning; it was still very dark and very cold, smelled like snow and ice so God knew it wouldn’t be much brighter once the sun rose.

        In half an hour, Mikasa would text to confirm the pass-off of Eren and Mr. Smith. Levi had this first meeting today and then he’d be on his way to Paris, himself, to meet with another small group there regarding the day’s first meeting. The boys would like the quick turnaround. And by the end of the day, he’d be at the Meurice, setting up a flight for Mr. Smith and a train for himself and Eren.

        Levi went into the coffeehouse restroom to fix his hair. He huddled deeper into his double-breasted coat and as he blew past the counter to leave, cradling his coffee close, he met and held the eyes of the barista who had flirted with him all through his transaction. Moron.

        Levi didn’t mind the walk to the meeting point. It was not long and the biting air was refreshing. It cleared his mind, let him leave all his extra worries stored and undisturbed, to focus with purpose and precision on the first items of today’s agenda.

        He walked fast, but Mike didn’t have a problem tailing him, per usual, in the car.

        The place was a quiet, unassuming comedy club, quite the unfair tenant for a corner Baranovskii Art Nouveau masterpiece of a building. Streetlights winked from the windows, reflected in granite-framed stained glass.

        Mike rolled the car to a parallel-parked stop across the street and about five meters down from the side door where someone else’s lookout granted Levi access to a set of inside private stairs.

        In an apartment above the comedy club was where this particular group conducted quite a few meetings. The man at the door led Levi up to the apartment.

        “Jorge, thank you!” Dieter cried with a nervous laugh as he welcomed Levi into the apartment. The main room of the flat was set up for tea, table situated so they could watch the sunrise light the curving Kazan Cathedral across the canal once it came. Dieter looked like he hadn’t slept since Levi had almost killed some of his dumbass associates the other night.

        Seated around the table were faces Levi recognized after having attended a few meetings with Dieter now—Darius, Boris, Kitts Woerman and Ian Dietrich. Kitts and Boris had not met with Levi the other night. Kitts was the owner of the comedy club, which was one explanation for his restless paranoia. He looked a little coked out, actually. Levi’s lip curled. He did not respect a man who conducted business under the influence.

        “Please, please, take a seat,” Dieter begged, smoothing his own hair anxiously and gesturing for Levi to sit at the end of the table opposite him. He was in a fine white shirt and an off-maroon suit, something ugly and avant-garde and presumably popular in the high fashion world this month. Dieter was a rich man’s son who’d never worked a true day in his life. Whatever; it made the job easy.

        Levi took off his coat and seated himself, crossing one leg over the other the best he could and laying his coat across his lap. He plucked out a silver cigarette case, tapped a cigarette on the table and lit it, eyes roaming the room, taking in any details worthy of suspicion.

        There didn’t seem to be any.

        They were all terrified of him.

        They weren’t about to push their luck. This was a simple business discussion, nothing that needed real force. The table was set for tea and breakfast. There was soft music playing from a radio in the kitchen.

        Levi exhaled a steady stream of smoke, leaning forward with his chin propped in his free hand. He wagged his hanging foot and looked down the table at Dieter, raised his brows.

        Dieter waved hard at his men. “Someone get Petra a drink. Coffee, Petra?”

        _Petra_.

        Levi lifted his to-go cup from the coffeehouse and smiled sweetly, eyes hooded.

        Dieter snapped a finger. “Blini, then. Fresh fruit—Kitts, for fuck’s sake, man, pass around the scones and Devonshire cream, don’t eat them all, you son of a bitch.”

        Levi kept smiling at Dieter, quite wolf-like, gently wagging his foot and silently smoking his cigarette.

        The pinched looks on their faces said everything.

        They were very intimidated. They were intimidated by the strawberry-blonde hair, the black bra showing through a half-sheer white button-up blouse, cinched tight and high at the waist by a black pencil skirt, slit in all the right places to keep from fully restricting movement and to show off the balanced knife strapped to Levi’s stockinged thigh.

        It never ceased to blow his mind that Petra’s reputation, while not much more daunting than Levi’s reputation, made it quite simple to operate without more than one visible bodyguard—practically unprotected compared to other jobs—all because she was a woman and somehow a dangerous woman was much more frightening than a dangerous man.

        Levi tossed hair out of his eyes with a gentle shake of the head, inclined his chin and leaned back. Yes, whether mother-worship or sex appeal or simple mystery and threat value, they were afraid of deadly, unspeaking Petra as she smoked and looked around at them all silently.

        Dieter the rich man-boy cleared his throat and got down to business. “We spoke with Levi not long ago.”

        Levi snapped his glance over to Dieter again as if to say, _How dare you. But go on._

        Dieter fiddled with his napkin, stirred sugar into his tea. The rest of his men slumped along the sides of the table, eyes sliding from Levi to Dieter and back. “He offered more money,” Dieter finally revealed. “He said Pixis could offer more money and more market for the guns.”

        Levi cocked a brow. The other night when he’d met Dieter out of drag, he’d also promised protection, but Dieter conveniently left that out. Good negotiation technique.

        But it could never beat the leverage Levi had as being both himself and Petra.

        Levi said nothing. He smoked. He drank his coffee. He poked at his blini and Dieter looked worried it was not satisfactory.

        “Ian, get out the guns. So our empress here can view them again.”

        Levi’s other brow gave a little twitch. He narrowed his eyes at ass-kissing Dieter, smiled still, in a way he hoped would make Dieter even more uncomfortable. Dieter smiled back thinly.

        The briefcases they dropped down to the table rattled the fine china. Levi reached over and flicked cigarette ash into Boris’s empty teacup. The men fumbled with their private lock codes. They opened the briefcases and displayed to Levi, again, the samples of underground manufactured Jati-Matic firearms. He’d heard the story from Dieter before—collectors’ models could be farmed for real parts, but the barrel had to be made outside legal view.

        “I know a couple gun enthusiasts,” Dieter bragged modestly—an oxymoron possible at least by him but not any less irritating. “Again I remind you there has been a huge surge in interest in vintage items, and there were only four hundred or so of these made originally. They take Gustav M-45 mags, too—I have men who can manufacture the barrels fast and we’ll ship them around before distributing. All we need is a backer for start-up.”

        Levi rested his cigarette against Boris’s teacup and lifted a little one-handed Finnish submachine from the briefcase, stroked the high pistol grip and fingered the barrel. Stamped steel, aluminum. It was an open bolt, blowback—semi-automatic. They’d initially discontinued it because of stolen parts and an early criminal popularity. Why the current scene wanted to resurrect a gun from the eighties was beyond Levi, but it _was_ a good, clean investment. He had hopeful buyers. He had the bankroll. Now he just had to decide whether he wanted this in Shadis’s name, or in Pixis’s name.

        There was muffled, distant commotion—shouting, a little bit of wrestling.

        Levi’s eyes shot up to Dieter and Dieter looked to Darius. Darius stormed to the windows, looking down at the embankment below. He didn’t seem to see any worrisome activity. Levi looked to the apartment door; it was from down below, in the hall. There was a gunshot.

        Adrenaline sluiced through Levi’s nerves. He tossed the empty gun to the table and grabbed his own from his coat—but it was admittedly unnecessary, because Dieter had obviously instructed his men to protect Petra at all costs while in her presence. Now see, Petra’s reputation really _was_ a magical one.

        The apartment door blew open and Kitts wailed, “Watch the china shelf!”

        It was not Jorge, or anyone else Levi might have expected—Shadis himself, Erd, Aruro, Gunther, Mike…

        It was Erwin the God damn motherfucking American Smith.

        In an instant, Levi caught the details.

        Dieter and his men, ready to attack. Mike chasing after Erwin, Jorge with a gushing nose after Mike.

        Erwin, a mess of blond hair and frantic, bloodshot, stormy blue eyes, light stubble, the Hämmerli from the other night in one hand and blood painting a healthy river down one arm of a borrowed sweater.

        Levi shot an arm out and trained his handgun on Dieter. “ _Nobody fucking move!_ ” he hissed through the ruckus, as high in octave but sharp in tone as he could manage. Nobody seemed to notice if he failed, but everyone did reluctantly grind to a halt. Even Erwin Smith.

        Levi’s nerves were on high alert—how the hell did Erwin get here? Had Eren brought him? How had Eren known where he was? What had happened? Why wasn’t he _on a God damn train to Moscow_?

        He knew one thing, and that was that all this disorganization was going to give him indigestion.  

        Levi stood slowly, draping his coat over one arm and crossing the silenced apartment without removing his gun from Dieter. The sound of his heels on the faded tile was crystalline and ominous. He liked it. He elbowed past Jorge and whispered through his teeth to Mike, “Reschedule the meeting. I’ll call you.”

        And then he sank iron fingers into Erwin’s arm and jerked him down the stairs behind him.

* * *

**{belmond grand hotel, st petersburg | early saturday morning.}**

Mike had obviously been on Erwin’s heels the moment he saw the man, because he’d left the key in the car.

        Levi snapped his fingers for Erwin to follow him into the car. He peeled away from the curb before Erwin had even closed the door.

        Erwin Smith was in full panic mode—enough that he didn’t even seem to notice his bleeding arm, which Levi knew was a bad sign judging by what good hunk of Erwin’s anxious, naïve character he’d witnessed thus far. Levi hissed out a long, irritated sigh through his teeth as Erwin practically blubbered:

        “Do you speak English? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—you probably don’t remember me, from the warehouse, with Eren—I just—I was just driving in circles wherever I saw English signs, I recognized some of the places from earlier—I’m supposed to be on a train right now but I was just driving in circles trying to figure out what to do, and then _I saw you_ and I knew I had to get your help, I need to get to Levi, something terrible has happened—”

        Levi’s hands twitched on the steering wheel. His heart gave an awful lurch that was like bottoming out. _Something terrible…_ What the fuck did that mean? He cut Erwin a razor-sharp glance, and it wasn’t even for the sake of disguise now that he said nothing. It was the cold, focused drive of adrenaline and instinct—the side of him that took over in moments like this, emotionless and calculating.

        He swerved into the valet drive of the Belmond Grand Hotel, hardly minutes from the comedy club on the canal. Handing the keys to the valet, who knew him from last night, he threw his coat over Erwin’s bloody arm and led him very, very calmly through the lobby to the lift.

        “Oh my God!” Erwin blurted as the elevator doors closed them in, face twisted in a horror so honest and expressive he looked like an overgrown child in their reflections in the shining silver. He shook off the coat and said again, “Oh my God, I’ve been shot!”

        “No, you haven’t,” Levi seethed below his breath. “It looks superficial, I think the bullet grazed you.”

        Erwin was so hysterical, it seemed he did not even notice a recognizable voice.

        Very ready to get out of his heels and strip down, Levi dragged Erwin after him to his room. Elbowed open the door. Oh, all he felt like doing right now was giving the guy a hearty punch. He could feel it, buzzing in his fingertips—the rage crystallizing into violence. How _dare_ he impose like this? How _dare_ he endanger them all like that? How—

        _Something terrible…_

Not quite sympathetically, Levi directed Erwin to sit on the bed and hold his arm above his head, but to be careful not to get blood anywhere. He kicked off his pumps and stomped over to his bag, dialing Mikasa’s burner and propping his phone between ear and shoulder as he dug through his things for a pocket first-aid.

        “ _Mikasa_ ,” he snarled in Russian when she picked up, “what the fuck is going on? Why is the American storming Petra’s meeting?”

        “Titaniki,” Mikasa hissed back, though she sounded at wit’s end. “I saw them, on the security footage—they snuck in and grabbed Eren at around three o’clock. I don’t—I don’t know how no alarms went off!”

        _Titaniki_.      

        Livid, Levi threw the first-aid kit to the king-sized bed, where Erwin was looking around dazed and confused, but did indeed have his arm up in the air. Levi pinched at his temples for a moment just to keep the flare of fury from spreading any further from his tightening jaw and raising hackles.

        “Levi, I’m—”

        “Don’t apologize,” he cut Mikasa off, voice raw and ragged. “Where are you? Were you with the American?”

        “ _No_ , that cocksucker took the car while I was talking to Armin!”

        “You did not tell Armin that the cocksucker is a civilian we’re trying to get out of the country, did you?”

        “No, I said you and I found Eren at your cabin and were going to bring him home. But then the Titaniki—”

        “Okay.” Levi nodded decisively, pacing over towards the bathroom, unbuttoning his shirt with one hand. He was sick to his stomach, this was such a mess. But he was in business mode, too, and it made it so much easier to separate worry from action. It was a defense mechanism, sometimes. He’d gotten very good at it, which was sometimes worrisome.

        “Okay, listen. Where are you? You took a taxi? Go to Pixis’s, see if Marco knows anything. Have Sasha and Conny track them down—the Titaniki, I mean. Mikasa, breathe, for fuck’s sake. Eren’s going to be okay. We’re all going to be okay. Don’t I always make sure we’re okay?”

        “I’ll call you,” Mikasa whispered before she hung up, and Levi hated how her voice wavered.

        God damn Eren, always the eye of the God damn storm.

        Levi tossed his phone to the bed, too. Shirt unbuttoned down to the waist of his pencil skirt, he snatched the Hämmerli Erwin had brought with him and popped out the mag to check what was left. Quite a few rounds, perfect. Setting the gun down on the desk, Levi swallowed hard, trying to calm himself. It would not do to be angry or nervous. This was a mess, but he was the fucking clean-up guy. This was what he did. He could handle some of Shadis’s men snatching Eren. It boiled his blood—Shadis was the one who’d left Eren to die, after all—but personal vendettas required a much calmer playing ground than this.

        Deftly, Levi ripped off his Petra wig and dropped it to the hotel room’s desk, then shook out his own hair as he turned to level Erwin with a vicious smirk. “In plain English, you took my car, huh, motherfucker?”

        Erwin just gawked at him from the pastel blue bed, jaw hanging wide open and face drained of color.

        Oh fuck, right—Levi paced before him in a skirt and tights, an unbuttoned blouse showing off a lacy black bra on nothing special at all.

        Levi sighed and cocked a hip out to unzip the pencil skirt. He didn’t have the energy to waste on this big reveal bullshit.

        “So what the fuck happened?” he snapped, removing the second gun he kept at the small of his back. “You’re a _maniac_ , you know—interrupting a meeting. You’re either _stupid_ or you’re brave but maybe you’re just brave because you’re stupid, I don’t know what’s worse—”

        “Oh my God,” Erwin whispered.

        “How did they get in my cabin?” Levi demanded, unstrapping his knife from his thigh.

        “Oh my _God_ ,” Erwin said, moaned.

        “What did they do? Did they say anything to you?” Levi finished unbuttoning his shirt and stalked off to the bathroom to scrub the light makeup off his face. “Wait, never mind, you couldn’t understand them even if they said something.”

        “Oh my God…” Erwin said again, in a weak, quiet way. “Who the hell is Petra?”

        Levi scowled, standing there in the bathroom doorway half undressed. “ _Me_ ,” he fired back, because it was a stupid question. And then he was sort of unsure of himself so he just kept standing there, staring at Erwin Smith as Erwin Smith stared at him with his arm held up and out.

        Levi had never undressed of Petra in front of someone before and maybe it was the adrenaline, the heightened hum of electric instinct and tightened nerves in the wake of this most recent fiasco, but there was something raw and unfamiliar about it that really turned him on in a shameless way. He was exposed. He was defenseless. It was figurative and it was literal and it was boundary-busting fucked up.

        “I’m Petra,” Levi husked. “I’m sorry.”

        Erwin’s face crumpled in on itself like paper wadded into a ball. “Oh my God,” he said one more time.

        “Shit,” Levi snapped, scooping up the first-aid kit and jumping onto the bed all in one deft bound. “You’re still bleeding. Take your shirt off.”

* * *

Erwin stared at the wig and the folded skirt on the desk. The silence rang dully in his ears. He must have completely short-circuited at this point, because he felt far too calm for this turn of events. His heart wasn’t even racing. His hands were clammy, but otherwise he felt relatively numb—even where Levi was in the middle of a DIY stitch job on his bicep where a bullet had grazed him when he’d dodged Levi’s scruffy blond roommate and sprinted up the stairs upon which he’d seen Petra disappear. Though that numbness may have been because of the ice pack Levi applied for a good two minutes first, after he’d cleaned him with alcohol and applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

        Erwin felt so _dumb_.

        Just on the drive here, he’d glanced at Petra in the driver’s seat and thought, _Wow, Petra’s eyes and mouth look a lot like Levi’s, maybe they’re brother and sister, that would explain a lot_.

        But Levi was Petra.

        Erwin really was not sure how he felt about the sensation of the stitch thread slithering under his skin. “Are you sure?” he whispered, throat raw. “The woman at the warehouse wasn’t someone else?”

        Levi looked at him like he’d just spoken in baby gibberish—that embarrassing and unintelligible. Erwin stared back, but it was an impossible struggle to keep his eyes from roaming Levi where Levi sat cross-legged beside him on the bed.

        No pants, only those fine dark nylons pressing at the smooth tension of his abdomen just above his navel, an open white blouse and a black bra at the smallest size Erwin could imagine. With Levi hunched forward like that, Erwin could confirm there was nothing at all below the bra but tight, toned pectorals. Glint of silver. Okay, so he had a nipple piercing, too. Hardcore. And Erwin had never really used that word before.

        Levi stared at him without lifting his head, an altogether arresting thing with his gray eyes flashing and his mouth in a thin line. Amused, almost. Well, Erwin was glad he got a kick out of this, at least. He could have killed him, Erwin was sure. He could be dead right now. He might still be dead soon. He felt dead. Not physically, but—he just felt like someone completely different from himself.

        Dear God, Levi was the woman from the warehouse. The woman he’d danced very erotically with. The woman with whom he’d been ready to cheat on his wife. The woman he’d been asking everyone about.

        Levi—who had been with him for the last two days. Was Petra.

        “I’m so confused,” Erwin blurted. “Are you a—?”

        “ _No_.” Levi’s gaze sharpened. “It’s an alias. A disguise. I work both gangs,” he husked, voice jagged like glass.

        “Does Eren know?”

        “It doesn’t matter,” Levi muttered.

_She’s not exactly who you think she is…_

        “Oh my _God_ ,” Erwin moaned, and he felt like a broken record. It was just that he was so embarrassed now, so incredibly embarrassed by the way he’d behaved at the warehouse, dancing with the woman in the short dress, who hadn’t been a woman in a short dress at all, and dear God Levi had known all along who he was, Levi had known him as the man who’d danced with him in the warehouse this whole time and—oh God, there was something about Levi in a dress that had Erwin thinking in circles.

        “You’re Petra?”

        Levi popped a jab punch against Erwin’s side, gently but with a precision that summoned scenes in an industrial yard, almost crushing a man’s windpipes in one hit. “Don’t break on me now, America,” he snapped, but the ghost of a smirk played on his mouth. “I can’t have dead weight. You shot a man in the arm, you can deal with me in a bra.”

        “I can’t—I can’t though,” Erwin argued, and bare-chested in the open air with his sweater lying in his lap, gripped tightly in his free hand, his nipples got hard from a different sort of chill running up and down his spine. Suddenly it made sense—those glances he’d been catching from Levi over the last day or so that had felt so very heated and prying. It was sexual tension, plain and simple, leftover from the warehouse.

        “I can’t,” Erwin snapped again, “because I just want to _fuck_ you—”

        Levi almost dropped the first-aid needle and looked at Erwin like a deer in headlights.

        Erwin looked back, just as wide-eyed, horrified of where the confession had come from.

        Not that it wasn’t true, just that he’d said it—and so bluntly, so vulgarly. What was wrong with him? That wasn’t like him. But who the fuck was he right now? He had no idea. He’d left the self he knew back at home, apparently.

        He was losing his mind. He’d _lost_ his mind. He was so sexually confused and sexually frustrated, and the quiet, normal Erwin Smith he knew was somewhere else because right here, right now, he was some adrenaline junkie, bi-curious, sex-guns-crime-danger charged conductor rod buzzing for release.

        Something in Levi’s face changed—opened was a better word—unlike anything Erwin had seen on him this whole time. It was a look more like one Eren might give, piercing and unguarded and very, very burningly genuine. With the smear of faded black under his eyes—eyeliner was, according to Marie, the hardest part of makeup to remove—Levi looked dangerously young and delicious.

        _I just want to fuck you._

        It was the truth.

        Erwin thought Eren was adorable and lovable (and just slightly too stressful for anyone’s wellbeing), but Levi suddenly had him on fire inside. A blazing, impatient lust as his eyes dipped around Levi’s shoulders, that bra, the way his middle moved as he breathed, the way his lower lip begged to be bitten. Erwin already knew his body from the warehouse, that ass, those legs. Ugh, God, Levi half in drag checking the bullets in a gun—

        It was like thinking about how many different levels of jarring and perverted this was only turned him on more. It was _kinky_ in a way that terrified him because he was very, very, _very_ into it. Maybe it was just what happened when a man’s sex life was as vanilla and rather dry as his was.

        Whatever, Erwin would spend some time giving thought to his sexual definition later. Right now he decided that if Petra was the woman with whom he’d have an affair, no offense to Eren but then Levi was the man with whom he’d experience his first real homosexual accident.  

        Levi broke eye contact only to cut and knot the stich on Erwin’s arm. He stood up and put away the first-aid kit. He turned around, lashes lowered.

        He said, “You want to fuck me?”

        “Yes,” Erwin whispered back, confident about it now.

        He held his hands out and Levi was in them in less than three breaths, pushed Erwin to the pillows with a hand splayed on his chest and let gravity bring him down after into a crushing kiss. Erwin was ready for it. He broke under it, kissed back with a hunger he’d thought was reserved for teenage horniness. Well, he’d already kissed Levi at the warehouse, apparently. And this—he knew this mouth. He was unafraid. He was obsessed.

        This new Erwin Smith was kind of exciting, actually. Charged with passion—fear and instinct and raging lust, straining at the front of his pants already—he was powerless to defend against it. There was no thinking. Just need. He’d just gotten stitches in a hotel room and now he was making out with a male gangster in black nylons. How was that for an affair?

        Levi was not as frail as Eren seemed, but he was still smaller than Erwin—all condensed strength and power, taut muscles and a heat to his flesh like a little fire burned inside him. He sat up straight atop Erwin to peel off his white blouse. As he arched and reached around to unhook the bra, Erwin’s fingers pried up past the underwire and caught his nipples—yes, just one pierced. He thumbed the other, rolled it between his first two fingers, crunching up to rain kisses down Levi’s smooth middle.

        “ _Ah_ ,” Levi half-gasped, half-grunted, like this surprised him. The bra snapped loose and he wrestled himself out of it much like anyone would expect a man to take off a bra, crumpling it up to chuck like a baseball somewhere, anywhere. He grabbed Erwin’s head with greedy hands and hunched down to moan into his hair as Erwin replaced his fingers with his mouth on Levi’s chest. He gripped Levi by the stockinged thighs to keep him in place on his lap and it meant he could feel the way Levi’s hips rolled in two places, on his dick and in his palms, and it drove him mad. Absolutely, animalistically mad.

        “Mmph…” Levi hissed something un-English below his breath. Then he said, “Hell no, hold on,” and clawed a hand down the front of his nylons.

        Erwin was confused.

        He tried to help, yanking the tights lower down Levi’s hips, galvanized by just how far Levi went for this disguise—a pair of panties that matched the bra, simple but sexy.

        “Hold on,” Levi growled again without much threat. “I’m, _tak_ , tucked—you know, taped—” He swatted Erwin away, rolled off the bed and swung around into the bathroom.

        After a moment, Erwin decided he vaguely understood.

        It made him cringe. He laughed nervously, not really wanting to envision what it meant mechanically. He did imagine it made an erection quite uncomfortable, though.

        Levi returned tripping and stumbling out of his tights, face flushed, chest flushed, dick softly pink but not yet fully flushed. Erwin ripped at the fly of his own pants, welcoming Levi’s hot, hungry kisses as Levi tangled back up with him. Rough. Heated. Desperate. Erwin felt the same way, hijacked by instinct, reducing them both to primal design. Levi’s hair tickled his nose. What time was it? When would pale autumn daylight leak in past the closed patterned curtains?

        It was so fast, or maybe it was just because Erwin was so utterly lost in the moment. First he was jacking Levi off, just doing what he’d do to himself. Then somehow Levi was giving him a blow job, and it had been such an embarrassingly long time since Marie had given him a blow job that the shockwaves of fresh pleasure from the tight wet heat and swirling tongue on his cock pinned him to the bed. His whole body tingled with the sensory overload. And then all of a sudden like they’d done this together a million times before, or like it was programmed into a man’s design, some primal instinct inside him breaking open, Levi was half on his knees and Erwin was angling for penetration—

        Caught between breaths, Erwin thought, _I can’t do this_.

        But it wasn’t about the fact that Levi was a man, or that he had a wife at home. It was just decades of his own self-doubt.

        No, never mind. The tightly-wound string of sexual frustration had snapped completely. He needed to fuck—someone, something. The need was dizzying and primitive. So he fucked Levi like he never thought he’d fuck anyone in his life. Thrusting, hard, deep, fast—he was almost afraid of this new him and his hunger for catharsis in the flesh, his willingness to dominate and conquer.

        Levi seemed to like it, though.

        He gnashed his teeth at the hotel pillows, gripped them in manly little fists, arched his back and rocked to Erwin’s rhythm and his body was so hot and tight on Erwin’s dick, he didn’t even care if he came fast, he just needed to fucking _come_.

        “Fuck—fuck—” Levi panted, voice raspy and thick with sex.

        Work conference. Affair. Spa. Gunshots. Running from gangsters in a hotel room. Storage facility. The industrial building in the dark. _What is Petra like?_ The cabin on the shore. Eren, singing Queen. Petra in the double-breasted coat, going into the building. Petra upstairs at a table covered in guns, her eyes on Erwin like she was ripping him limb from limb in her mind. Petra in the warehouse, dancing tight with him, practically dry humping, kissing him against the wall. Petra—no, Levi, naked-chested and grinding down on him in a pair of black tights—

        Levi’s nails scraped Erwin’s skin and it gave Erwin chills. Levi kept time with his mindless desire like he was the one in control as Erwin orgasmed in a hard, frantic tempo of thrusts. Maybe Levi still was in control. He elbowed Erwin off before the last second or two of the orgasm had shivered out of him but it was just to throw himself back on top, get Erwin back inside him, crumple forward and bite at Erwin’s neck and throat between growling little moans as he coaxed himself to climax, body tensing and tightening in a delicious way.

        Hesitantly, Erwin joined Levi’s fiercely moving hand, between their bodies. He wanted to help. He wasn’t going to be that kind of man, the kind who didn’t pay attention to a lover after getting what he wanted.

        “ _Fuck!_ ” Levi gasped again, against Erwin’s jaw, voice cracking in a beautiful way. He let Erwin finish him off as he came on his stomach but Erwin didn’t care because he was so captivated by the look on Levi’s face as he threw his head back and uttered a string of glorious, hissing Russian words, none of which Erwin understood.

* * *

Levi’s cell rang.

        Muscles still weak and tingling from the much-needed sexual release of tension, Levi rolled off Erwin and staggered to the desk, answering. “Yeah?”

        “Levi—” It was Mikasa. “Marco called Shadis.”

        “Damn,” Levi husked. He crouched, knees together, and dug through his bag of things for a pair of fresh boxer briefs, then half-jogged into the bathroom to clean up before pulling them on. “And?”

        “He has Kenny with him. He wants a meeting with Pixis or a representative at midnight tonight.”

        _Kenny…_ Levi snarled, decent enough again at least in his shorts to trip back over and pull on a pair of jeans next. “For _what_?” he demanded, eyes dancing up to watch Erwin through the mirror over the desk as he made his way to the bathroom to clean up, too. He seemed a little unsure of what to do with double the semen. Levi snorted, had to literally bite back the grin about that one. But shit, look at that ass…

        “He didn’t say,” Mikasa murmured.

        Levi cleared his throat. Back to business. “Of course he didn’t,” he hissed back. “Did he name a price?”

        “He didn’t.”

        “Did you get a hit on the Titaniki?”

        “No. Sasha and Conny are still trying.” Mikasa paused. “Marco wants _you_ to go meet Shadis and clean things up. Because it’s Eren.”

        Erwin leaned against the bathroom doorway, a perfect mess of sex hair and the post-orgasm glow making him look quite hunky instead of just handsome. He was still shirtless, trousers undone yet though he was all washed up and tucked back in his boxers. His eyes were dazed but still concerned; obviously he tried to gauge the situation by the tone in Levi’s voice since he couldn’t understand what was said.

        “Yeah,” Levi husked, tugging on a gray Henley shirt. “Got it. Where?”

        “Moscow, his favorite warehouse.”

        “You want to come too, or what?”

        “I’m going.”

        “I’ll pick you up. We need to hit Red Box. I need money just in case, at least to front if Shadis names a cost. I’m leaving from Petra’s hotel now.”

        According to Mikasa, Hanji and co were a little more at peace now that they knew where Eren was—which was fucked up in its own right, but relieving. Levi ended the call and explained to Erwin as he packed everything up. A gun for him, a gun for Erwin. They had to get to Moscow by midnight and the M10 was always hell, so they needed to get going.

        Once in the car, Erwin finally broke.

        “Oh God,” he whispered through a hand, leaning against the passenger side window and looking out at the passing city in the lightening morning with bright, emotional blue eyes. The lack of sleep or mental respite really showed on him now, in the bags under his eyes and the weary pinch to his brow. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “This is…all my fault. Everything is all my fault. I can’t believe this.”

        “Shadis using Eren as a bargaining chip is totally unrelated to this whole mess,” Levi insisted. “Stop beating up yourself.”

        Erwin looked at him like he was shocked Levi could be so calm, so even. Levi heaved a sigh, reaching over to give Erwin’s wrist a reassuring squeeze. God damn the way good sex made him soft for a while. But it also revitalized him—made him sharp, focused, rearing to go like orgasm reset his body or something. Not to mention that Erwin Smith had been a remarkably better fuck than Levi had expected.

        “Things aren’t usually so eventful,” Levi chirped without a smile, swerving with one hand around a corner towards Moika Street as the other still clutched Erwin’s wrist. Then he smirked, meeting Erwin’s eyes in a quick glance. “You’ve brought quite the excitement, Mr. Smith.”

        Erwin stared at him still, brow knotting deeper and deeper. But then he smiled faintly, and there was nothing nervous about it.

* * *

**{somewhere on the M10 highway, 215 kilometers from st petersburg | saturday midmorning.}**

When the Titaniki broke into the cabin and jumped him, they busted his lip again and bruised his face, knocked him out old-school with a chemical-soaked rag to his mouth and nose. But nodding out like that had been quite the throwback, honestly—except, he’d never really searched for oblivion, just numbness, and after a while it wasn’t about the nod, it was just about a few minutes’ high and being able to survive the day.

        The Titaniki duct-taped his mouth so he couldn’t scream, and his hands behind his back so he couldn’t fight.

        But putting the black hood over his head so he couldn’t see where they took him—well, _that_ Eren just found quite rude.

If Jean were with him, Jean would have been able to tell where they were going by the bumps in the road, the turns of the car, the groan of the wheel axles. Jean was smart like that—Armin, too, Armin was an engineer sometimes. Hanji was also very good with direction, almost psychically so. But Jean was not with him, nor Hanji, nor Armin.

Eren was on his own, and Eren was sort of screwed.

He thought at least he wasn’t in the trunk. He was just on the floor of the backseat of what he envisioned to be an SUV, imported, and his captors smelled like week-old borscht and sharp, expensive cigarettes. He remembered from the Sestroretsk cabin that there were three of them. In the car, one of them smacked gum very loudly. The other two argued heatedly about who to root for in the Olympics—a man with a deep, grosgrain voice, the other a woman whose words cut like shards of glass.

        Eren couldn’t figure out the bumps in the road or the turns of the car or the groan of the wheels, but he _did_ catch the distinct stink of cows when his captors rolled the windows down to smoke the last time.

        Then one of the tires blew.

        _Praise God and all the saints and martyrs, hallelujah_ , Eren thought, and wiggled around impatiently on the backseat.

        The maybe-SUV shuddered and jerked and fishtailed to a shrieking stop, somewhere off the road judging by the obvious change in terrain and tilt of the world. Didn’t have to be an engineer to know that one. The shift in gravity sent Eren sliding slowly towards one of the car doors, off-kilter. He sighed impatiently through his nose.

        Eren waited. The duct tape was getting really itchy now. Doors slammed. One captor bellowed at the other, “What do you mean there’s no spare tire, bitch?” Oh, he was mad. The other guy was in for it.

        “What do you mean you have no cell service?”

        “I have no cell service!” That was the woman.

        “Not even on your burner, Annie? Fuck, neither do I—”

        The door at Eren’s feet flew open. He stretched out his legs in relief. One of his captors snatched him by the ankle and dragged him forth, hoisted him up and stood him on his feet. Man, it was cold and he had no shoes on. The world spun. Its anchors had gotten all jumbled to Eren from the ride. What was up, what was down?

        The nose of a silenced pistol jabbed into his ribs—he could tell by feel, he’d been poked and prodded by many a silenced firearm—and one of the men ripped the hood off his face.

        Eren immediately recognized his captors. Not by name, no, but by face. He’d seen these two men and this woman at a provocation meeting last New Year’s, at the warehouse a few times with Levi when Levi was Petra. The one with his gun digging into Eren’s side was the boorish blond ripped one, the other man had a foxlike frown, and the woman was small but terrifying because there wasn’t an ounce of fat on her, just taut muscle.

        They were all three associates of Shadis, Pixis’s frenemy. _Frenemy_ was a word Pixis had used himself. Shadis and Pixis had a feud going that had started on the playground—literally. Years and years ago. And now the playground was Eastern Europe and they were the heads of two of its largest international crime syndicates.

        “We’ve got to walk,” the boorish one growled. He wasn’t so bad-looking, just seemed very weathered and dissatisfied with the world. His snarl cut into his face like cracks in the pavement. A scar puckered one side of his temple, almost like the shape of a Star of David. He looked mad at everyone and everything _but_ Eren, somehow.

        The sun hardly broke through the clouds. It looked like rain—no, snow. It had been snowing in Sestroretsk. No buildings. They were in the middle of nowhere. Eren really hated the middle of nowhere. Sestroretsk was not the middle of nowhere, not like this.

        “We’ll take the tape off you but if you do anything stupid, you won’t even have time to regret it,” the woman iced out.

        The lanky dark-haired one made a finger gun and said, “Pow!” Then he laughed nervously.

        The boorish one tore the tape off Eren’s mouth and through the burn Eren snapped, “Yes, I get the threat. I’m not an idiot.”

 

 

**END CH. VII**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translation.** please excuse me for sucking.
> 
>  *** titaniki:** титаники, another play on words, _titan children_
> 
>  *** M10 highway:** highway running south to moscow, pretty much 9-10 hour drive   
> *** belmond grand hotel:** imagine it! http://www.belmond.com/grand-hotel-europe-st-petersburg/rooms


	8. Somewhere on the M10 Highway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere on the M10 Highway, Eren and the Titaniki venture into Krestnikov in search of a mechanic. Hanji checks Levi's security footage. Eren is not quite sure how he feels about being a bargaining chip, and Erwin has no idea how to measure between a mile and a kilometer--let alone what the hell is in store for him today.

**{somewhere on the M10 highway | saturday, noon.}**

Krestnikov was the closest village to where they left the car, two kilometers away, and _village_ was putting it kindly. Not because Krestnikov was small—oh, it was small, all right—but because _village_ brought a cute, folksy image to mind and Krestnikov was more a Soviet shadow than that.

        In a way, it felt kind of nostalgic to Eren.

        The hollow remains of abandoned factories and communal apartments loomed like great gray skeletons, empty, forgotten. No one had even cared to vandalize them. One single petrol station stood watch on the road off the highway. Shabby houses proceeded in perforated rows, almost-cabins with crooked porches and skinny dogs whining at screen doors. Beyond them, more houses hid in the hills and trees, wooden houses topped with mossy satellite dishes. In the distance, a school. A bar. A grocery store and other bare necessities.

        Shadis’s Titaniki group urged Eren off the road towards one of the outskirt houses, far enough away that the petrol station disappeared behind a small copse of trees.

        “Krestnikov, Krestnikov…” Eren hummed, tasting the name. The captor with the Star of David scar heaved a sigh and the other guy scrubbed at his face, looking kind of clammy and nervous. The woman tailed behind them, glaring at Eren when he smiled her way, though he just tried to get a better look at her in her gray sweatshirt and denim jacket so he could judge the level of danger he might be in.

        They’d all left their holsters in the car so they didn’t scare anyone, which Eren thought was admirable. _Titaniki._ Titan’s children, like Hanji and the others joked they were _Oprosniki_ —Surveyists, saw everything, knew everything. _Titaniki_ was supposed to be a comment on their brutality and indiscriminate unfeeling in this métier. Eren had worked with Titaniki, back when he’d run one of Shadis’s sex houses. These were not the same Titaniki as back then, just inheritors of the name, apparently—not the same Titaniki who took away his drugs to turn him into a titan’s child himself, saying they’d give the drugs back if he did this sale or that theft or shoot a man from a roof. _Pulling out his potential_ , they’d called it. _You have a way with the business_.

        Eren stopped at the edge of the little unsuspecting Krestnikov house’s yard and there went the pistol again, bruising his side. He cut his boorish blond captor a critical glance. “You work for Shadis, but I don’t remember your names.”

        The blond one grumbled, “Reiner.”

        “Reiner,” Eren echoed. Reiner was nice enough to have lent Eren his jacket because it was cold, an old bomber jacket that also smelled like week-old borscht, cheap cigarettes, _and_ an automobile mechanic’s. Eren swam in the jacket. But it helped conceal Reiner’s gun against his back. Eren looked around at Shadis’s other Titaniki. “And you?”

        “Why the fuck does it matter?” the woman sneered.

        Reiner sighed. “Just answer him, he’ll shut up.”

        “No, I won’t,” Eren argued.

        “We should have kept the tape on you,” the nervously sweating one murmured. But then he added reluctantly, “My name is Berthold.” He looked to the girl, raised his brows, gestured sharply.

        “Annie,” she muttered bitterly.

        “Well, Reiner and Berthold and Anya…” Eren shrugged, hunching lower into Reiner’s bomber. If he wasn’t so alive with silvery instinct and adrenaline, he’d really have felt the two kilometers’ walk in his knees and feet. It really sucked to walk that far in just socks, but nobody had spare shoes. “I’m guessing you didn’t expect the flat tire.”

        “No _shit_ ,” Annie snarled.

        “We didn’t,” Reiner confirmed. “Or not being able to use our phones. So we’re going to borrow this kind little Krestnikovian’s phone and make a call, and you’re going to go along with everything or—well, I think you’re well aware of what then.”

        Eren nodded. He didn’t really have anything up his sleeve, anyway. Trouble just always found him. He blamed being young and cute. He wasn’t sure how he was getting out of this one, but he was confident he would.

        What he was more concerned about was Erwin Smith, back at Levi’s cabin.

        Eren really, really didn’t want anyone to blame him for this and do something rash. He really did not want to lose his ticket out of Russia. He really did not want to live with that on his conscience—something bad happening to Erwin Smith, because of him.

        “Why didn’t we just use a phone in town?” he asked.

        “Too many cameras,” Reiner grunted, sticking his pistol back in its holsterless hiding spot, up under his shirt, as he crossed the overgrown yard and climbed the sagging steps of the old porch.

        “Also, for the love of God, _shut up_ ,” Annie added for Reiner, and Reiner knocked on the door.

        The kind little Krestnikovians, plural, turned out to be an older man and his daughter, who seemed very, very surprised to have guests, let alone outsiders. Awkwardly, as Reiner held the crooked screen door open and Berthold ushered Eren forth, smart enough not to let him out of his immediate sight, the Krestnikovians watched from their cramped living room with almost identical looks of embarrassment and doubt.

        Eren stopped in the center of the living room and looked right at them.

        “They’ve kidnapped me!” he cried.

        If the Titaniki were bombs, that was when they would have gone off in violent and angry bursts. But they weren’t, and so they just tightened up and went beet red and Berthold uttered a whining, “Oh?” and maybe a vein pulsed somewhere around Reiner’s Star of David scar.

        “Don’t—don’t listen to him,” Annie said, looking like a fox with her sharp face and calculating eyes, a fox planning the vengeful massacre of an entire wily rabbit’s warren. But Eren didn’t let her finish. He heaved a dramatic sigh, shrugged off Reiner’s bomber jacket and threw it over the back of a stool near the front door as he went on, talking over Annie:

        “My brothers and sister have kidnapped me for a ‘weekend in the country,’ they said, a ‘real blast,’ they said—a _dacha_ and everything—and what happens? We get a God damn flat. Can you believe it?”

        The Titaniki all wilted in relief. Eren was a little offended they doubted his ability to wing it.

        “This is my father Rod Reiss, and I’m Frieda,” the young woman introduced herself and her father.

        “Can we use your phone? To call…” Reiner was obviously too flustered by Eren’s willing act to remember his original plan. “To call a mechanic.”

        “You can’t change a tire yourself?” Rod Reiss mumbled judgmentally, quite the hunched and rustic gentleman himself. Eren thought his face looked sort of like an onion. Not literally, but like—if someone were to draw a cartoon of him, he would have been a grumpy onion.

        That vein under Reiner’s Star of David scar twitched again. “I don’t have a spare. Do you have a spare?”

        “No,” Rod Reiss said.

        “Then I need to call the mechanic—”

        “You can call him,” Rod Reiss confirmed, “but there’s really no point because it’s his anniversary today so he’s closed. You’ll have to wait until he opens again tomorrow morning.”

        Frieda looked around expectantly. She really wasn’t that old at all—she just looked very tired and sad. Eren could imagine why, living out here in the middle of nowhere with a grumpy onion. “I’ll make some tea,” she announced. “I’m making lunch right now if you want any. We don’t mind you waiting here until morning.”

        “We don’t?” Rod Reiss asked, then turned back to Eren and the Titaniki. “Did you leave the car out on the highway?”

        “What else can they do?” Frieda suggested. “Anyway, I have extra quilts, so it isn’t a problem.”

        “Yes,” Berthold replied honestly, “we left the car on the road.”

        “Oh.” Rod Reiss gave a nervous wince. “That’s a shame. I’ve heard a lot about cars being picked apart for criminal sales lately. Well, hopefully it’s still there in the morning when you call the mechanic.”

        “Do you mind if I use the phone just to call and let my wife know I’m all right?” _Twitch, twitch_. Reiner’s face was caught between a mad grin and a grimace of pain.

        “Reiner,” Eren hissed, “you look constipated. Stop that. Where are your manners? Oh—Ms. Frieda?”

        Frieda looked in from the kitchen. Eren pointed to his feet. “Could I borrow some clean socks? I stepped in mud getting out of the car, so I left my shoes.”

* * *

**{** **bol’shoi sampsonievskiy prospekt, no. 4-6, and** **levi’s moika river apartment | ealier saturday morning.}**

Something was up.

        Hanji just didn’t exactly buy all of Mikasa’s story—Mikasa, blowing into the house like a windstorm, Marco’s German shepherds nipping and barking playfully at her heels as she cried to half-asleep or sleep-deprived loved ones that Eren was gone, Eren had been taken.

        Hanji’s gut instinct instantly went to that motherfucker with whom Eren said he was working in private. Eren knew his shit; Eren could handle himself. But too often Eren got more wrapped up in the concept of being capable than actually allowed him to be capable, and on top of that he’d threatened to leave enough times in the past that it would make sense he’d just try and leave without saying a word this time. Jean said he did it for attention—but there was something restless and rustling in Eren that Hanji recognized, that Hanji knew personally in herself, that made her believe in even his most impulsive convictions.

        In the office where Marco dialed Pixis, Hanji knew everyone thought the same thing—Kenny. Shadis. That stranger in whose hotel they’d found Eren. _Erwin Smith_ , the name tags on his luggage had said, and the American identification card in his wallet. But they couldn’t connect him to _anyone_. They’d had Conny on it for the last five hours, just trying to get a lead on why this guy mattered. No trail. But no trail was not necessarily a good thing.

        Mikasa said, “No, no, Eren was at Levi’s cabin, we found him and everything was fine until the Titaniki…”

        Hanji stood in her sweater robe, arms crossed, hair loose—she’d been sleeping on the couch, waiting for Sasha to call with any sightings of Eren or his accomplice that weren’t at Petra’s club up on the water, waiting for Moblit to confirm the police were off their trail after what happened at that hotel the other afternoon.

        “Why didn’t you tell us right away, that you found him?” Hanji asked, voice raspy with sleep as she frowned at Mikasa across the desk, where Marco sat stony-faced and icy-eyed, waiting for Shadis to pick up his phone call. Jean and Armin looked to Hanji like they hadn’t even thought to ask that question.

        Mikasa shrugged.

        It wasn’t that Hanji didn’t trust Mikasa. No, she trusted Mikasa in a way she trusted no one else. But something just felt off.

        “Fucking _prick_ ,” Marco hissed, throwing the telephone receiver down after speaking with Shadis. “He won’t tell me what it’s about but he’ll meet with someone in Moscow tonight. Call Levi.”

        “The hit at the spa?” Jean suggested in a gravelly way. He’d been napping on the couch in Marco’s office while Marco had popped a breath mint and Canadian Adderall, a gift from a business associate, and obsessively scrutinized management notes for any holes in organization or suspicious activities that might explain this disappearance of Eren with a man allegedly part of some other group—not really chain-smoking but simply forgetting he left cigarette after cigarette smoldering to its own demise in the marble ashtray after only a few puffs each.

        “Fuck if I know,” Marco whispered, scrubbing his hands down his face.

        Obviously, there was no reason to continue hunting for Eren. They knew where he was now. But Sasha and Conny would keep combing the world in their hacker way for that blond man who’d been with him. His American citizenship might have seemed to others an argument against his involvement, but it really wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t, and Hanji was not unconvinced about the truth of Eren’s story about a side operation. Much as everyone loved to say otherwise, Eren was reckless but certainly not an idiot.

        Nonetheless, Marco told them all to fuck off and get some rest in case Shadis tried to start shit.

        Hanji gathered her things. Armin wrapped his arms around her waist and sat behind her as she put her shoes on. She refused to go until she saw him in his bed and getting much-needed sleep. As she made her way down towards the private penthouse lift, she heard Levi’s voice, noticeably urgent. He must have raised hell once he’d arrived. He’d probably hold a grudge for a while about this whole mess, but Hanji knew how to work him.

        Levi and Mikasa blurred into the foyer, rushing out the door. He’d come to pick her up, then. They were going to meet with Shadis, after all—find out what the fucker wanted now.

        “Levi,” Hanji said, hurrying down the stairs. “Do you need anyone else—?”

        Levi spun like he hadn’t noticed her, like he was on edge. His gray eyes were sharp but skittish, lip curled. “No,” he said, looking Hanji up and down. “Get some sleep, Hanj. I’ve got this.”

        _Something_ …

        Hanji half-jogged over to the windows that overlooked the street below. Just as she suspected, there was a car parked down there at the curb—Mike’s car. Mikasa and Levi scrambled into the car. There was a third person in the backseat, probably Mike, a smear of black coat and blond hair.

        _Something not right…_

        Hanji went home.

        The apartment code was still the same. _Black tea._ She shuffled into the apartment already stripping for a long, hot shower for which she felt she was fully deserving. Eren was located, Levi and Mike and Mikasa were on it, she could at least relax for a few hours—

        Mike was sprawled on the sofa with a throw pillow over his face to block out the slow, pale daybreak, still dressed like he’d just been on a job.

        Hanji stopped, shirt dangling from one hand as she squinted at him. “Mike?” she said.

        Mike lifted the throw pillow and met her eyes.

        “You didn’t go?” Hanji asked.

        Mike shook his head.

        It dawned on Hanji slowly, second by second as clouds rolled across the gray autumn morning.

        Mike’s car.

        _The man in the backseat._

        Hanji threw down her shirt and stormed off to the office, where Levi had the security monitor feed streaming on his desktop if a user knew where to look. She clicked around, entered in the right passwords. Opened the streaming and changed the function so she could rewind. She rewound. She rewound. Nothing unusual for twenty-four hours. She kept rewinding—

        She sat down hard in the leather desk chair, feeling like the breath had been knocked out of her.

        How the fuck had they been so panicked they forgot to check this already?

        The blond man—Erwin Smith—was on the home security video, in and out of the apartment with Eren and Levi for at least eight hours in one night. Erwin Smith, in the kitchen. Erwin Smith, given clothes. Erwin Smith with Mike, and Mikasa, and Eren, and Levi, and—it made sense, suddenly. Sasha had located the coordinates of Eren’s burner earlier, somewhere around the Nevsky and not moving for the entire three irritating hours they’d spent staking out the vicinity. Now it made sense: Eren had abandoned the phone to throw them off his tail.

        But what _didn’t_ make sense was that Levi was in on things.

        Eren, working with an associate of Kenny’s, Kenny who favored Shadis’s gang out of spite for Levi. Shadis, taking Eren and refusing to say why until a meeting was held. Levi stopping at home for Mikasa and leaving with the associate of Kenny’s to meet Shadis. Shadis, who had Kenny with him.  

        Hanji could already predict Jean’s reaction. _I always told you the guy would turn on us! You can’t play both sides! He’s only loyal to himself—_

        Hanji didn’t want to be rash. She wanted to track Mikasa and Levi’s burner phones first. She needed proof before she could confront him about it. She had to be able to back herself up; Levi was sort of a sucker for a well-thought-out argument. Hanji was, too. They were a blackmail and torture dream team.

        Hanji was not going to ask Mike. She already knew he was in on it—whatever it was. She pushed the desk chair over so she could slam the office door shut and she called Jean. He made an incoherent and mildly violent sound when he picked up, which meant he was either almost asleep or had been asleep.

        “Jean,” Hanji snapped, fast-forwarding and rewinding and fast-forwarding to rewind the security footage yet again, grinning coldly the more she watched and re-watched Levi talking to Erwin Smith from the doorway of Eren’s room. “Things just got even more fucking interesting.”

        “God, no…” Jean groaned. “What does that even mean?”

* * *

**{krestnikov | saturday afternoon.}**

While in the squat, yellow-lit kitchen, Rod Reiss and Frieda whispered together about their surprise visitors, so their visitors whispered together in the small living room. Eren examined his face in the hanging mirror beside a Majak cuckoo clock. He had a split lip from Annie, and a soft purple bruise flowered from Reiner. Lovely.

        His captors sat awkwardly on the plaid couch and a leather-topped bench near the door, and thank God most of their coded tattoos were hidden by turtlenecks and long sleeves because they already looked very brutish and out of place in the little house with its folksy wall hangings and faded downhome feel. The dark carpet, the wood panel walls, the lingering scent of candle smoke and fresh dill, the boxy old television cabinet and the collage of vintage patriotic paraphernalia, taped up like a teenager’s posters with yellowing tape. The biggest image was a coolly smiling Lenin, framed in dried roses. Family photos danced across the windowsills, where the short patched-up curtains missed the glass by a few inches.

        The smell of tea wafted in from the kitchen and Eren wandered around pretending to explore the living room, though really he was just eavesdropping as Annie hissed, “I’m sorry, Shadis wants us to stay _here_ for the whole thing?”

        Reiner nodded grimly.

        “What are we supposed to do, Reiner? Huh, smart guy?”

        “We wait until morning,” Reiner conceded without looking at Annie or Berthold. He sat stiffly reclined with his arms crossed tight, the posture of a big man feeling small in an uncomfortable situation. “Shadis says he might make a call tonight to use Eren as a threat. You know, it’ll help if he sounds particularly distressed or in danger, but we don’t have much to work with right now.”

        “Why can’t we just steal _their_ car?” Berthold whispered, nodding in the general direction of Frieda and Rod Reiss.

        “Because that’s unnecessary. And not our present orders.”

        Annie scowled and lit a cigarette. In an instant Frieda was back in the living room, flapping her hands angrily. “Out, out!” she said. “I’m sorry, but there’s no smoking in my father’s house! Get on the porch!”

        Reiner’s hand clamped on the back of Eren’s neck like he thought Eren might make a run for it outside in the dim day, but Eren didn’t. Now they could actually talk openly, anyway. They all huddled together on the crooked porch—Berthold even bummed Eren a cigarette—and Eren demanded, “You called Shadis, right? To explain how you fucked up? To have him send another car out here?”

        Reiner said, “Shadis will send a car after the meeting,” and Berthold stuttered, “We didn’t fuck up—” But Eren wasn’t through.

        “What is this, anyway? What’s going on? Why are we here?” he hissed.

        “Eat shit,” Annie snarled.

        “Annie, he’ll cooperate if we tell him,” Reiner said around a weary sigh.

        “I’m not cooperating now?” Eren snapped, insulted.

        “We’re blackmailing Levi,” Reiner explained.

        _Blackmailing Levi._ What bad luck and bad timing. Also, he didn’t like the idea that he was being used. He’d never been held for ransom before, but there was a first time for everything, he guessed.

        A cold feeling swept through Eren. But he tried not to show it. “What makes you think Levi will bend to anything just because you have me? That’s betting an awful lot on how important I am. I’m not that important—”

        “Oh, save it,” Reiner interrupted. “We’re not idiots. Shadis says that’s one of the only reasons they keep you around anymore, is to keep Levi in check.”

        “Bullshit,” Eren snarled, eyes flashing over Reiner. “Why does everyone think I’m good for nothing else? I may have lost my spot as top dog distributor, but when I make deals now, I make _good_ deals. Once, I negotiated stolen art by a million euros. I was never late with payment collection. I’m a damn good lookout. I take hit jobs—I killed a guy just a few days ago! And— _and_ I fucking clean the house. Windex, dishes, toilet, everything!”

        Eren took a very long drag off the charity cigarette before he let any other private grievances escape his lips. Annie and Reiner scowled like they expected him to say something else. Berthold frowned. Eren didn’t know what else to say. It hurt, talking about all this. He certainly did not work as much as he used to, but he hadn’t thought he’d fallen so out of practice to be a hostage. It was easier to bitch to strangers, yes, but the Titaniki did not need to know anything more about him.

        Reiner waved a hand dismissively—almost apologetically, it seemed. He husked, “Shadis thought you were the best bargaining chip. Isn’t that enough?”

        Eren just murmured thoughtfully, “Hmm.” Levi would not be happy about Shadis implying Eren was his Achilles heel. Part of Eren didn’t put it past Levi to, just to prove something, let Shadis’s men beat Eren up bad. Especially since Eren had caused so much trouble in the last few days.

“What’s the crime?” Eren husked, because they were not lowlife thugs, they were high in the ranks on either side so they could at least talk like gentlemen with each other.

        Annie laughed. “We’re hitmen and thieves, everything’s a crime.”

        Eren wagged a finger. “One man’s villain is another man’s hero, remember that.”

        Still clutching Eren by the nape of the neck, Reiner said, “Your boss stole the Matryoshka dolls deal from Shadis.”

        “Levi’s not my boss—oh, you mean Pixis? Yeah, well, maybe Los Angeles just liked us more. And that was six months ago! What is Shadis, a grumpy wife?”

        “Pixis also destroyed an entire _obschak_ system in Butyrka Prison,” Berthold contributed.

        “Good,” Eren snorted. “I’ve been in Butyrka. For like a month, anyway. But your money-collectors are awful. Hey! _Your_ boss took out a God damn politician last week but you don’t see Pixis kidnapping _your_ loved ones to make you ease up, do you?”

        “That wasn’t turf war. That’s just different political subscription.” Annie rolled her eyes.

        “Look, none of that is Levi’s fault,” Eren insisted. “Why didn’t you kidnap Pixis’s daughter or something? Why twist Levi’s arm instead?”

        Reiner finally released Eren but he could still feel the outline of his fingers on the back of his neck. He rubbed at it, pouting darkly.

        “Because,” Reiner said, eyes piercing into Eren alongside Annie’s, as Berthold looked at his feet and smoked quietly. “We know the only soul in the world who can wrap your boss around his little finger is none other than your boss’s favorite brigadier, his most precious cabinet member— _Levi Ackerman_.”

* * *

**{somewhere on the M10 highway, again | earlier, saturday noon.}**

“You’re going very fast,” Erwin pointed out about Levi’s driving, marveling at how quickly Russia unfolded and stretched on from the city into lovely countryside nothingness like it was the edge of the world.

        “Yes,” Levi replied. “I am. This is a seven-hundred kilometer trip.”

        Levi spoke with him in English, which Erwin was very grateful for, even though he felt bad because Mikasa had given up trying to keep pace with the conversation.

        They didn’t really talk about much, though. Levi awkwardly asked about Erwin’s job and for what work conference he’d come to Russia and Erwin awkwardly replied, not feeling quite as talkative as he had two days ago—though that talkativeness had very certainly been worthless and due to nerves. There was an alarming number of cars on the rough, bumpy highway, a lot of them less than stellar drivers, but Levi had a real knack for breaking out of the traffic clusters, it seemed.

        There was something gnawing at Erwin’s mind, though—something a lot sharper and more persistent than anything else struggling to pry through the numbness that came with this new Erwin Smith of the last long forty-some hours.

        Erwin held his breath unintentionally as Levi cut close to another car going the opposite direction to narrowly pass a semi-truck that maybe should have been retired at the start of the Cold War. They hit a large bump in the pavement and it was like the jolt shot the words out of him.

        “I feel very guilty,” Erwin blurted.

        Levi threw him a look, cocked a brow. The bridge of his nose wrinkled. “Eh?” he said.

        “For having sex with you while Eren is being held hostage,” Erwin rushed out below his breath, avoiding Levi’s eyes. But in his peripheral, he noticed Levi’s hand twitch on the steering wheel. “Is that normal? To do something like that?” Erwin asked.

        Levi shrugged, smirking faintly in that way Erwin was getting used to—not quite personable, but not quite cruel. “They’re not going to hurt him,” he husked. “They know if they hurt him, I will kill them.”

        “You’re not worried?” Erwin prompted.

        Levi shook his head. “We’ve been in worse situations.”

        “Worse than what happens when an American man witnesses a hit job?”

        Levi didn’t answer. He smiled—not a smirk, but a smile—and stayed quiet. Erwin smiled back, even if Levi didn’t look.

        They rode in a silence that was not at all empty, but seemed part of the conversation. This stretch of the road was remarkably clearer. Erwin couldn’t read the speedometer in kilometers, but it felt like they zoomed close to ninety miles an hour.

        Just like with Eren, Erwin asked, “Are you in love with him?”

        Levi did not twitch; he did not look at Erwin. And that guarded composure seemed to Erwin like the question was not an unexpected one.

        “I’m not in love with him,” Levi replied, voice low but not unkind. Erwin watched his storm-gray eyes move across the world outside the windshield, across the waving grass, the broken fences, the clustered sagging trees and a small town on the horizon. “I cherish him,” he said, “unfortunately.” He laughed flatly. “But I am really not in love with him. Does that make sense?”

        “I don’t know,” Erwin said sympathetically.

        There was a black SUV pulled off the side of the highway, left cockeyed half in the shoulder ditch and half out. All three sets of eyes hung on it as they approached it, as they passed it. It was not running; it was empty. Abandoned. Strange that someone would abandon such a nice-looking car.

        Mikasa muttered something in Russian.

        “ _Da_ ,” Levi answered, chuckling.

        “What?” Erwin asked.

        Levi shrugged and cracked the window so he could smoke. “Flat tire,” he said, about the car. “Sucks to be them.”

 

**END CH. VIII.**


	9. To Paris, With or Without Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi has been charged with more than enough hostages to know better. Eren knows how to play hostage--and he also knows how to play Levi, especially when he's angry. Erwin has no idea what anyone is saying but he is well aware he is at a high level mafia meeting that feels grossly flamboyant. Hanji, Jean, and Armin are done fucking around. So Armin calls Mikasa.

**{krestnikov | saturday night.}**

Dinner was a chunky soup with barley and sour cream. Frieda nervously overlooked her unfortunate guests as they ate, a motley little dinner party herded into the cramped kitchen at a quarter past eight like any of them knew each other at all.

“We know you’d much rather be at your vacation house,” Frieda apologized. Idly, she braided her dull brown hair, a gesture very much like nail-biting or foot-wagging, it seemed.

Berthold looked up from his food, quite confused. Eren did the same, a slice of bread sopped with soup poised and dripping before his open mouth. Annie glared at him disapprovingly for it. But he was starving. He hadn’t eaten all day. He’d been duct-taped in the back of the car.

Reiner, looking like he felt in the company of complete idiots, heaved a sigh and rubbed at his head. “Right. Our vacation house,” he grumbled, and gave Eren a kick under the old table. Eren grunted. Okay, he deserved it. The vacation house was his lie, after all; he needed to keep track of his story. Reiner said, “This is just as good for now, trust me—peaceful, idyllic. Exactly the reason we came out to the country in the first place, right, Eren?”

“This soup is delicious, Frieda,” Eren said.

“You look like you have a rash,” she pointed out.

Rod Reiss squinted Eren’s way for the first time in maybe two hours, rather disparagingly.

Eren looked at his wrists where they peeked out from his sweatshirt sleeves. Fuck, the marks from the duct tape. “Uh,” he said back.

“Hold on.” Frieda stood. “Dandelion, thyme, or burdock—just a drop—cures rashes in a wink. I’ll get it.”

Eren shook his head in wonderment, looking at Reiner and Annie and Berthold. “First socks, now rash cures,” he said contentedly, and raised his brows at Rod Reiss with a smile. “And little old me can’t tell the difference between rashes and tracks anymore.”

“I’m sorry?” Rod Reiss asked, cocking an onion-head brow and squinting at Eren again over the wire rims of his glasses, frowning so hard it was like his mustache danced a little.

“For the love of God, just stop talking, Eren,” Reiner grumbled.

Rod Reiss and his family had lived in Krestnikov all their lives, they said—something about the factories, nothing really interesting. The Reiss family was simple. Country bumpkins. That was that. Brothers and sisters had all grown up and moved away, mothers died. Frieda asked everyone about their wives and families, and Eren looked around at the Titaniki and then sat back in his chair in disappointment. The three of them were so clueless and uncertain. Had they never had to lie on their toes before? Come on, now.

Eren pointed at Berthold. “Well, Berya over here has a girl, a lovely girl who loves him very much, I don’t know what he’d do if anything bad ever happened to her. They’re going to be married soon—”

Berthold snorted on a spoonful of soup and looked at Eren, so very betrayed, like Eren had landed too close to home for his comfort.

Eren nodded, winked at Berthold before gesturing to Annie and throwing back a gentle gulp of the tasteless local beer Alyosha had offered them all. “My beautiful sister Anya, she pretends to be so strong and respectable, she’s the real hardline ‘businesswoman’ type, you know, but she’s afraid no one will love her. Anya—” Eren frowned, straightening the cuffs of Annie’s sleeves for her. She swatted him away and flashed him a warning glance. Eren grinned. “Anya, don’t you know you’re beautiful the way you are? Maybe if you wore your hair down, like Frieda here.”

Frieda waved her hand in modesty.

“Reiner,” Eren went on, “oh, Reiner’s a real player. I feel bad for any woman fool enough to fall for him. Like his wife. He’s got a sweet, beautiful little girl, too—how old is she now, Reiner? Three?”

Reiner was clearly fed up with this, Star of David scar creased as he smirked at Eren sideways and played along by saying just enough but never the whole truth. “A player, eh? So says my own little brother, who we found with a married man in his boyfriend’s cabin this morning—”

“Oh,” Rod Reiss grunted, almost choked on his beer, stared at Eren like he was afraid the government might somehow hear this homosexual propaganda all the way from Moscow.

Eren’s smile twitched but did not fall. He narrowed his eyes right back at Reiner. So the Titaniki weren’t entirely buffoons; they noticed the small things like only the real dangerous ones did, like the wedding ring Erwin had never taken off his finger, the precious idiot. Eren’s smile finally crumbled into a scowl and baring his teeth at Reiner like an animal, he said, “I was _working_ , you know that, _brother_.”

“Is that what they call affairs with married men nowadays?”

“I didn’t sleep with him, I—”

“You two were having a real fun time, from what I saw through the window…”

Eren’s heart sank a little and he blushed hotly, felt a little sick to wonder how long the Titaniki had been staking out the cabin. But the fury was stronger than the humiliation and he pounded a fist on the table then jabbed a finger in Reiner’s face. “You don’t know _shit!_ So help me, if you don’t shut up, I will force feed you an entire bag of sugarless gummy bears and then what, huh? Then what?”

“See, this is why we decided we needed some quality time together, just us _brothers and sister_. We need to straighten you out before we can do nothing to help you anymore.” Reiner shook his head sadly.

This was a disaster. Frieda and her father stared. Annie just held her head in her hand, defeated. Berthold smiled nervously at his dinner. Eren drank the rest of his beer in a few long swallows, glaring at Reiner as Reiner competed with the rest of his soup.

They watched the nightly news and cable soaps with the little Krestnikovians for almost three hours after dinner.

“You are all exhausted, I’m sure,” Frieda said eventually, around eleven-thirty. “I’ll just get you three some blankets and… And you can sleep in the living room…”

The uncomfortable little Krestnikovians turned out all the lights and retreated to their bedroom down the hall with their four guests set up in the living room under dusty-smelling quilts. The back porch light glowed through the kitchen window. The nighttime wind groaned a little against the house, through the sound of nothingness for kilometers all around. Eren thought it was quite peaceful, but not as peaceful as Levi’s cabin in Sestroretsk.

“How the fuck old are you all?” Annie seethed, eyes glinting in the dark.

“Twenty-two,” Eren replied.

“It was a rhetorical question, bitch,” Reiner muttered. “She meant what happened at dinner.”

Eren wiggled around and threw one leg over Annie’s side, trying to kick Reiner. Annie grabbed him by the knee and threw him back into place.

“Ow,” Eren mumbled. “You’d treat your brother that way?”

Annie snapped. She rolled over hard and pinned Eren to the floor, elbow jabbed right between the ribs and a knee angled close enough to rupture an organ with the right kind of hit. She clamped a hand over his mouth. “Listen,” she spat through her teeth, “we are under a lot of pressure and you are not making it any easier. How dare you turn the tables on us like you have tonight? _You_ are the hostage here! You are in no position to play games with us! This is blackmail and you’re not special just because you’re one of Pixis’s little puppets. And you know, right now, I am wondering how easy it would be to take your head in my hands and just squeeze until something cracks.”

“Annie…” Reiner whispered, trying to reign her back in.

Eren gawked up at Annie from under her frighteningly tight hand with bright, wild eyes—not wild out of fear, but resignation, of course. He understood his situation, in his own mad way. He was just trying to survive it. He had unfinished business. He didn’t have time to be a hostage. He needed to get Erwin out of Russia.

 _Puppets_.

Annie rolled away again, pulling the quilt up over her shoulder.

Reiner sat up on his elbow, frowning at Eren over Berthold. He cleared his throat. “We’re not brothers,” he husked. “Now, if I wake you up in the middle of the night for a phone call, your life depends on you saying exactly what I tell you to say. Got it?”

“We’re not blood brothers,” Eren agreed, hesitantly, “but we’re all part of the same brotherhood, aren’t we?”

Reiner uttered a vicious scoff. “Ha! No. I am a bodyguard and a cover. You? You’re a glorified whore, at most. You think because you share Levi’s bed and accept a few contract killings, you’re suddenly anything more than an office bitch? No, no we are not part of the same brotherhood, you and I. Now shut up.”

A cold, numbing current zipped through Eren’s body and he felt his face go empty, about as empty as he felt lying there quietly under Reiner’s irritated glare. He didn’t quite know what to feel about that. It was very existential and depressing to consider that what Reiner said might be a more widely popular opinion than Eren had previously assumed.

 _Office bitch_.

In a voice that felt as much like broken glass as it sounded, Eren said, “Do you plan on sleeping, Reiner? Or do you plan on watching me all night, in case I stop cooperating and try to escape?”

“I don’t plan on sleeping,” Reiner said flatly, but he did not confirm why.

“Hmm.” Eren sat up on one elbow. “Then I’d like to talk _terms_ of cooperation, please.”

* * *

**{a warehouse on the outskirts of moscow | saturday night.}**

The most annoying part, in Levi’s opinion, was that Shadis’s favorite warehouse was not in Moscow proper but ten kilometers outside the city limits, in Gorki Leninskiye.

The slam of the car doors rebounded through the misty quiet. Levi hunched lower into his coat, shoved his hands in his pockets as he rounded the car and took in the view of the silky black birch and pines that encircled the huge, empty complex. It actually was quite beautiful, more beautiful in the light of day—he knew from plenty a time spent here as Petra.

Nonetheless, it was remarkably safer and less suspicious out here, beyond the reach of city lights and city probing. The specific warehouse was privately owned by someone Shadis knew, used mostly to load and unload products for chain home improvement and construction stores, sometimes rented out to circus performers who needed open space to practice aerial dances and fire-breathing—while in a dark, dusty, concrete upstairs level, hostages were housed, interrogations delivered, and on the fly meetings held.

Behind Levi, Mikasa popped a full magazine into her gun, cracked back the slide to chamber the first bullet. As they approached the door where Gunther waited with his slicked-back hair and quilted coat, Erwin’s shadow stretched longer than everyone else’s.

“Gunther,” Levi greeted.

Gunther’s eyes sharpened. “Levi,” he returned. He and Levi were only on a first-name basis because this was not the first meeting Levi himself—not Petra—had held with Shadis. Gunther’s glance skidded to pick Erwin and Mikasa apart.

“Your usual men aren’t here,” he commented, and it was highly distrusting.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Levi promised. “Big boy can hardly shoot a gun without pissing himself and _hime_ over here will only snap your necks if you harm so much as a hair on Eren.”

Gunther looked Mikasa and Erwin over one more time before his mouth twisted up in a puckered frown and he hoisted the garage-style warehouse door open with a grinding squeal, led them in and through the towering metal shelves of pallets and tightly-stacked boxes. The smell of woodchips and dirt was strong, stronger even than the faint whiff of mildew and cigar smoke.

Upstairs in the center of a dreary slate-gray balcony level that looked like a parking garage without the cars or the parking spaces, Shadis had a table set up with two chairs, a samovar, a carafe of water and a half-gone bottle of vodka. There was even a small vase with flowers in it, and cream and sugar for the tea on a doily the size of Levi’s fist. And most disgusting of all, there was a small portable radio off to the side playing slow, charming Schubert.

Shadis and Pixis had, for years, been competing as to who could have the better meeting aesthetic. Levi at least knew that this particular cozy style was all Pixis’s genius, and Shadis just looked jarringly out of place trying to one-up it. That was Dieter got it, then.

Shadis sat in one of the chairs, in a casual jacket and creased pants, smoking a cigar. Off to the side was his daughter, Historia, and her bodyguard Ymir. Levi knew what Shadis had in mind. He was afraid of Petra’s power. He wanted to rival it by indoctrinating his daughter as a mafia heir. _Good luck_ , Levi wanted to say.

Lined behind Shadis like soldier recruits in a yard waiting to be drilled were Erd, Aruro, Marcel. All of these men who knew Petra well but still had no idea Petra was Levi. And leaning back at the wall of the concrete balcony, smoking a cigarette… Levi sighed. Kenny, the corrupt policeman. His own uncle, there to threaten him into whatever deal Shadis wanted to strike, because Shadis had him in his pocket. Just another reason Shadis left a bad taste in Levi's mouth, along with his flagrant boasts of power and the way he could leave a young man supposedly so valuable to his business ventures bleeding to death on the street.  

“Levi!” Shadis greeted cheerfully. “Sit down. I’m sorry, I don’t have any chairs for your friends.”

Levi stopped short about half a meter from the empty chair. He glanced to his uncle, met his eyes.

“Kenny,” he murmured, tipping his chin.

“Levi,” Kenny replied, tipping his hat.

Shadis waved for Levi to take a seat.

Erwin and Mikasa stood behind him, far from as intimidating as the others behind Shadis. But it was fine. There was no real thrumming of danger. This was how things went when a man was at the top of the food chain, anyway—tea parties and realpolitik, games of chess and show-off diplomacy. Just like big corporations or politics, the daily grind of pettier criminal activity was delegated to those lower on the totem pole, run from a distance to evade narcotics police and market enemies, in a comfortable office in a beautiful penthouse, in some riverside café that cost hundreds of euros a plate, in a make-believe tea party in a warehouse.

Nonetheless, there was an unspoken system of etiquette and integrity here. Shadis couldn’t pull anything. He wouldn’t risk ruining his only reliable albeit tenuous connection to Pixis. He knew Levi could convince Pixis of anything and he knew if he held the possibility of endangering Eren over his head, Levi would bend.         

Levi lit a cigarette and accepted the vodka double, the steaming black tea.

“So what the fuck are you interrupting my night for?” he snapped.

Shadis’s smile faltered; it was more natural for him to scowl, rubbing idly at the back of his bald head. “My Butyrka money-collectors,” he grumbled, counting on his knobby fingers. “Three of my best sex houses, a sixth of my market share, whisperings about stealing a weapons deal, not to mention my Matryoshka doll plan, which cost me _millions_ —”

Levi cocked a brow. “You’re still mad about the Matryoshki?”

Shadis ground his teeth then puffed hard on his cigar. “It’s time for Pixis to back the fuck off,” he edged out. “He’s getting out of line. He’s got St Petersburg, I’ve got Moscow. We agreed on that.”

“And two of the sex houses were in St Petersburg, were they not?” Levi asked calmly. One of them had been Deep Relax Spa, after all. Shadis in Moscow, Pixis in St Petersburg, that was indeed the understanding, but both Shadis and Pixis were always interested in undermining and competing with each other in the hopes of one day infiltrating enough territory to steal it completely.

Shadis glared at him and chewed the end of his cigar. “Sure,” he replied after a long pause. “But one of them was not.”

Levi had talked to Pixis on the way over and gotten the go-ahead for negotiations. “What if I talked to Pixis about compensating you for the brothels?” Levi waved Mikasa over. “I already have some recompense for the amp dealers.”

Shadis softened a little at the prospect. Mikasa lifted a briefcase and opened it enough for Shadis to see the neatly packed money inside. But then his face twisted in a conflicted scowl. He lifted a teacup and growled before a sip, “I’m above bribes, kiddo. Plain and simple, I want Pixis to fuck off. He stays in line, I stay in line. We’re gentlemen. The past will stay in the past—but I’m unwavering in my conditions.”

“It’s not a bribe.” Levi frowned, offended. “Keith,” he said, addressing Shadis by first name, “when have I _ever_ bribed you? When have I ever failed you? You know I can weave Pixis like a river reed. That’s not a bribe, friend, that’s payment. We owe you, after all, for taking the amp business. Don’t we? You know I operate with integrity. We fucked up.”

Shadis puffed on his cigar. “I want the tourist circuit in Thailand,” he rumbled, finally revealing the real ransom to be paid for Eren.

Inwardly, Levi cringed. Outwardly he just sighed. He tapped cigarette ash in the little tray and finally poured himself a cup of tea. They made hundreds of thousands a year on the Thailand brothels. Then again, it had been attracting some unwanted legal attention lately. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Okay.

“Okay,” Levi said, smiling faintly. “You want it? I can call Pixis right now and confirm the trade. He’ll do it.” He finished his smoke quietly, letting Shadis wait on tenterhooks. He deposited the smoldering filter in the ash tray and leaned back, arms crossed. “But you get no money and I don’t call Pixis until you swear on your life that while you walk away with a brand new, better business venture, I walk away with Eren. Bring him out, now. I want to see him.”

“Hmm.” Shadis nodded, stroked his goatee. “Hmm,” he said again. “Ah, well… If we don’t have a problem, he won’t have a problem…”

“Eren’s not here,” Historia chirped from her seat under a fluorescent light, leaning around Ymir’s side to meet Levi’s eyes. “They got a flat tire on the way and they’re stuck in some town hours north.”

Levi’s eyes veered to Shadis, cutting like a knife, cutting like the new shockwave of adrenaline vibrating through him. “ _Are you fucking kidding me_?” he roared. “You—who the fuck do you think I am? There is no fucking deal until I walk out of here with him, and _you know_ your livelihood next to Pixis depends on me, Keith, you _fucking know_ , have I _ever_ fucked you over before?”

Shadis waved his hands frantically, trying to cover his own ass. “Levi, you can talk to him, if you’d like—”

Aruro snatched out a cell phone and started dialing.

* * *

**{krestnikov | saturday night.}**

“And he bought a Makarov semi-automatic from Berinsky—”

Berthold shook his head. “No, Reiner, it was a TT-30. I remember that. I do.”

“It _wasn’t_ a TT-30. It was a blowback, _I_ remember that.”

Eren’s terms of cooperation had been that if any of the Titaniki had drugs on him, they share, and he’d cooperate. No tricks, no questions. But only if they shared. Berthold had immediately produced a coin-sized baggie of dope from his pocket, looking like a kicked dog, and Reiner and Annie were ready to beat him to a pulp for fessing up.

“You play with fire,” Annie had warned. Eren rolled his eyes. There’d barely been enough powder to make even a humble line, so splitting it into three tiny bumps on the flower-wreathed portrait of Lenin that Eren very, very carefully peeled off the living room wall, which was no mirror but the nice vintage card stock proved smooth and sturdy enough, was not worrisome, not even for a low tolerance. Not in the least.

It was only fair, Eren felt. _You ever do that shit again_ , Levi had said a long time ago, _I’ll kill you._ Well, what Levi didn’t know didn’t hurt him.

Down the hall in the Krestnikovians’ bedroom, Rod Reiss snored loudly and unevenly. The cuckoo clock chimed once for the half-hour. Somewhere outside, beyond the crooked little house, a dog howled, but Eren and the Titaniki were undisturbed, sprawled fuzzy and mellow around the living room arguing pleasantly about guns and duels like the chummiest of pals.

“Makarovs have bigger bullets than TT-30s,” Eren pointed out helpfully. “What did the autopsy say?”

“Oh, the autopsy said a nine-millimeter caliber. It was fixed sight, so it _had_ to be a TT-30.”

“Silenced Makarovs have fixed sights,” Annie argued.

“Fine then, it was a silenced Makarov… Anyway, the point is Melnik bought a Makarov off Berinsky, the guy we have in State Security, and _that’s_ what he dueled Wagner with. Shot him right through the ribs.”

“An old-fashioned duel?” Eren rolled onto his belly to peek at Reiner from over the arm of the tartan couch, where he’d moved to be more comfortable. “Like Pushkin?”

“Shh!” Berthold begged, gesturing lazily to the tiny hall. Rod Reiss’s snoring had paused. And then it started back up again, like a stuttering car.

“Like Pushkin.” Reiner nodded. “Poor Wagner, what a shame.”

At some point, Eren drifted off into the most comfortable in-and-out dozing he’d experienced in a long while, all peaceful and smiley.

The telephone rang at a quarter to two a.m. Eren tried to ignore it, snuggled up on the couch in a cozy Krestnikovian quilt. There was shuffling, whispering. Finally, the phone stopped ringing. Thank God. Back to the soothing sounds of a calm, rural autumn night…

Someone snapped their fingers. Someone else tapped Eren on the face, just short of a smack.

“Get up,” Annie whispered.

Eren groaned and dragged himself off the couch, swaddled in the borrowed quilt like a royal cloak. He wavered into the hall where the telephone was and Reiner shoved the receiver at him.

“Hello?” Eren whined, closing his eyes. Man, he could drift back to sleep on his feet if he wanted to—oh, something to lean on. It was Reiner’s hand at the small of his back to keep him steadied. Eren yawned.

“ _It’s Levi_ ,” the voice scratched out from the other end of the call.

“Yes, hi, Levi. It’s me.”

“ _Are you okay?_ ”

“No, I’m not okay…” Eren popped one eye open and looked to Reiner for encouragement. Reiner nodded vigorously, cocking a brow. Eren knew what the point of a hostage was. He mumbled, “They’ve done horrible things to me, and it’s all your fault. Horrible things, horrible. They used me like a cheap whore and beat me like an ugly dog. I’m scared. I want to go home.”

“ _Shadis, you motherfucker—_ ”

“Tch, I’m bullshitting,” Eren said. “Calm down, _lapochka_.”

“ _For fuck’s sake, Eren—_ ”

Behind Levi, in the background, was Shadis, sounding like he’d much rather Eren be all right, which was kind of confusing because Eren was supposed to be the hostage. But then it wasn’t confusing because Levi’s cooperation depended on Eren’s wellbeing—hmm, Eren felt warm, so warm. The warm feeling ran like electric waves down the backs of his arms. He wanted to go lay down again.

“Yeah,” he went on, “they’ve been nothing but nice to me, actually. I’m even still a little stoned. We had a great night in this cute little village called Krestnikov. They’re good men. And woman. In fact, one of them even asked me to switch teams and work for Shadis again. I think I just might. Fuck you, Levi. Fuck everything.”

That felt exceptionally good. Eren hung up the phone and swatted Reiner’s hand away from his back. Reiner looked like someone had just swept his feet out from under him, though he still stood, just gawking at Eren.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he fumed, voice contained to a careful hiss so as not to wake their kind hosts. “We never asked you to switch teams. We don’t want you—”

“Yeah, I lied, duh.”

“You’re playing head games. You said you’d cooperate—not say we were _nice_ to you. What the fuck was that?”

Eren narrowed his eyes. “Listen, Levi hates when I enjoy myself with anyone else so out of spite, to make sure I’m not wandering astray, he will bend, he will compromise, he will do whatever he has to, to get me back irritated but in one piece. Shadis will get what he wants, whatever deal he’s trying to strike, which means he’ll be pleased with you Titaniki for so _aptly_ handling our unfortunate situation here. Right? Win-win. Anyway, I’m cooperating, Reiner. You guys are right, Levi has Pixis wrapped around his finger. But did you not think I’ve got _Levi_ wrapped around _mine_?”

Reiner was dumbfounded. “What is going on here?” he muttered, rubbing at his face with both hands.

“It’s simple, Reiner.” Eren flashed him a cold look as he swayed back to the couch, eager to sleep. “You three got us into this mess with the flat tire and shitty phone service, I got us out of it. And _that_ is brotherhood _.”_

* * *

**{krestnikov | sunday morning.}**

They were running on caffeine, nicotine, and nerves—and honestly, it all felt rather anticlimactic to Erwin. No violence in the warehouse, no real arguments or obvious threats, just a relatively calm discussion that, nonetheless, had been incredibly tense for him because he hadn’t understood a word of what was said. And all things considered, it was remarkably funny that they’d passed the car with the flat tire on the way to Moscow.

“It’s not funny,” Levi growled. “Now you sound like Eren.”

Shadis sent three of his men with them in a black BMW X5 Security SUV, riding the back bumper of Mike’s unimpressive, outdated coupe. The village looked like the kind of bucolic, peeling-paint, private and unmoving place like places in middle America featured on the Food or Travel Channel, and as they dipped and bumped into the wide yard of a little house with an empty laundry line and faded windows, Eren burst out onto the crooked front porch with a clatter of the screen door.

“They hit him,” Erwin blurted, very troubled by the bruise on Eren’s face and the modest split in his lip. He looked to Levi. “Are you going to hurt them for that?”

But Eren looked otherwise absolutely okay—in fact, as energetic and precocious as usual, like he was oblivious to his own injuries.

Erwin stayed in the car while Mikasa and Levi and Shadis’s men piled out of theirs like ants from a dropped treat. Eren leapt off the little porch and ran for Levi with a cackling half-mad shout of relief.

An older man and probably his daughter peeked out their front door cautiously. Eren’s three captors hurried out in turn, looking frazzled and haggard like Eren had utterly broken them. Light bounced and caught Erwin’s eye as the passenger-side window of the SUV next to their car slid down very slowly and another one of the men there from Shadis issued an impatient gesture.

Mikasa crammed Eren into the backseat with her, Levi got behind the wheel. Eren’s three captors climbed into their boss’s car, and then they were off to the highway to fetch the third vehicle with its flat tire.

* * *

They parked behind the broken-down car on the shoulder of the M10 for the Titaniki to recover anything they’d left in it. Levi got out and punched Reiner hard across the face.

 _Shit_. Eren scrambled out of the car, much against Mikasa’s wishes, but if there was going to be a fight now, he wanted to be ready.

Reiner took the hit with dignity, though. Shaking out his hand, Levi said coolly, “Shadis promised me that as a little bonus if he and I reached a nice agreement. We, in fact, reached a _great_ agreement.” He turned and brushed right past Reiner’s bristled teammates. Annie looked like she wanted to rip his eyes out, but knew better than to attack one of Shadis’s VIPs without prior clearance. Levi stalked back off towards Mike’s idling coupe. Eren frowned at the Titaniki, draped tensely against the open back door of the car.

“ _Wait!_ ” Annie spat, hands clenched in shaking white fists.

Levi stopped and turned again, just halfway, his hands in the pockets of his long double-breasted coat, the mid-morning wind tousling his dark hair.

“What the fuck is this?” Annie wailed. Two cars blew past them up on the pavement of the M10, one and then a few sharp breaths later another— _zoom!_ “What are you saying?” Annie seethed again. “Did you make a _truce_? This was all pointless?”

Eren’s eyes veered to Levi. Levi just shrugged, looking so God damn cool and composed. Their lone wolf. Their clean-up guy. He said, “Well, we reached an _agreement_ but I guess you might call it a truce.”

“What the fuck was the agreement, big guy? Eh?”

Levi scoffed a little, shifted his weight to his other foot, like all this was wasting his precious time. “Shadis was satisfied with a percentage of the Matryoshki deal. We also gave him an entire sex tourism circuit and came upon a mutual agreement to stay out of each other’s hair. You boys are down in Moscow, we’re up in St Petersburg… Really, it’s all worked itself out. What do you think we are, Slonovskaya? No, we’re all gentlemen here, aren’t we?”

Eren chuckled. The Slonovskaya syndicate, from Ryazan, had been in its prime twenty years ago but fought with every other gang in their city now. Total mess. Bigger, more sophisticated brotherhoods rolled their eyes about it.

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Reiner interjected through clenched teeth. “I’d bet my life you only gave us the brothels to pin us with them later, you fucking traitor.”               

“Traitor?” Levi’s brows drew together elegantly and Eren felt a little swell of pride, eyes jumping between him and the riled-up Titaniki. Everyone was on their toes like they were in the presence of royalty. Anyway, there was still a code of honor to attend to even in the midst of defused turf war.

“Who am I betraying?” Levi snarled. “Certainly not you. You’re of no concern to me. You’re Shadis’s problem.”

“But—” Reiner ripped off his flat cap, which he’d grabbed from the broken-down car, and threw it to the ground, practically buzzing with fury at all this trouble for naught. He jabbed a finger at Levi, and then at Eren. Eren reared back, not sure why he was targeted now. He was the fucking hostage here, he had nothing to do with the truce. “You’re fucking us over, Ackerman, and you know it, you sneak! I can see it in your smug face. Brotherhood! Right, Eren? What happened to that?”

Eren felt his smile fall away. How dare Reiner use that against him, that precious creed? Especially when he was so ready to disown it? His face hardened; his throat tightened. He stood half in Levi’s shadow, hand lingering on the car door, and he said to Reiner, “You’re not my brother.”

* * *

**{sheremetyevo international airport, moscow | sunday late afternoon.}**

Their flight to France would arrive at nine p.m. Paris time.

Mikasa handed Erwin his passport and dropped them off at the passenger terminal, their guns in the back of the car. They’d all had full confidence in the Paris plan following through even in the midst of hostage disaster, apparently—somehow, the bags they’d taken with them to Levi’s cabin were safe and ready for a plane trip. Erwin envied such organization.

Professional criminals traveled in comfort, and at this point Erwin did not feel guilty for such seemingly unjustly won luxury. He and Levi shaved in the airport restroom while Eren watched their bags; Levi promised new clothes in Paris, a hot meal, a comfortable bed.

For a heart-stopping moment or two as they went through passenger inspection and security, Erwin thought, _They’ll have a problem with my passport._ But there was no problem. It was almost disappointing there was no problem. No flag like there was a missing persons alert for his face, or even a warrant out by Russian police. No issue with his weary eyes and wearier shoulders. They must have assumed he was flying the usual route back to America—Western Europe first, then home.

 _Home_.

As the plane took off, a heavy feeling of dread and disappointment descended on Erwin. Foreign flight attendants spoke over the plane’s intercom system. He didn’t even try to pay attention, just drifted into the melody of it. He watched the brilliant lights of circular Moscow slowly disappear below the scrim of nighttime clouds.

Soon, he would be in his own clothes. He would hear English around him again. He would drive the roads he knew. He would probably face a demotion at the least, or if he explained what happened, some time off while the company debated firing him. He would be back in his house. He would see his dog. He would sleep next to his wife.

Erwin looked to the side, surreptitiously, observed Eren curled up in the window seat and already next to asleep even with the turbulence of taking off, and Levi in the middle, head tipped back and resting his eyes. These two mafia men, who had helped him with no promise of reward, who had gone out of their way to keep him safe from their group when it was no real responsibility of theirs. Eren, with his stupid parka and maniac smirk, a wolf’s eyes behind a sighted gun and a scar like stigmata on his throat. Levi, with his soft mouth and sharp chin, arms crossed loosely across his chest—Levi, and the way he smelled when Erwin buried his nose in his hair in a hotel bed and fucked him into the cool blue comforters, the taste of his skin as he ground against him in a pair of tight black nylons—

It was all ending, Erwin realized with a dull stab of distress in his chest.

He was on his way to Paris, and then on his way home.  

* * *

**{** **levi’s moika street apartment, st petersburg | sunday late afternoon.}**

Armin’s mouth was dry and his throat so tight and raw with emotion, he felt like he would choke on his own tongue if he took too deep a breath.

Feeling sick, he slammed back from Levi’s desk and stormed into the kitchen to pour himself a drink.

Jean poked his head out from Levi’s office, face dimpled in concern. He didn’t ask. Armin didn’t have to explain.

He was a little heartbroken and disbelieving, but it was hard not to see exactly where Hanji’s suspicions came from as she showed them what she’d found on Levi’s security cameras.

The blond man Eren had been with in the hotel room… _He’s with Kenny! He’s dangerous!_ Side job. Mikasa, and Mike, and Levi, housing this stranger, housing Eren— _they’d known all along where Eren had been_ and they’d _kept it from them_ , let them worry, and panic, and search and search and—

Armin moved slowly back into the office and stood by Jean, arms crossed, feeling very hollow and dazed. What made him tremble the most in battered fury was that Mikasa had lied to them. To _him_.

“Show me again,” Armin whispered, voice jagged in his throat. “Tell me again.”

Hanji showed him again, reluctantly, the footage of Erwin Smith in the apartment. She said, “I am positive Erwin Smith accompanied them to meet with Kenny and Shadis. I don’t know what that means, but—Eren said the guy was connected to Kenny, and if that’s the case…”

“They even used Mike’s car,” Jean muttered, rubbing at the side of his face. “What the fuck is going on? This isn’t—like them. I mean, I know I say nasty things about Levi sometimes, but it’s really not like him. Right?”

“No, he’s a loyal son of a bitch,” Hanji murmured. “I called him, too. After I called you guys. He said he was going to take Eren with him to Paris to make sure Eren stays out of trouble now that we’ve got him. He’s got a job with Petra there tonight. But he did not mention Erwin Smith at all.”

Armin’s shoulders bunched up. Petra terrified him. He wasn’t sure why. “But Petra works for Shadis,” he said. “Isn’t that just as bad as this Kenny associate?”

Hanji and Jean did not seem particularly bothered by this reminder. Armin didn’t know how they could be so comfortable with Levi engaging with a woman from the other side. Jean cleared his throat like he didn’t want to say something. Hanji finally looked over her shoulder at Armin, brow knotted. “You know Levi works well with Petra,” she said, flatly. “The two of them—everything would fall apart without them.”

“But if they just met with Kenny, and now he’s meeting with Petra,” Armin blurted, “and that Smith guy is _with_ Kenny…”

Hanji held her temple in one hand and sighed, eyes narrowing. “I know,” she caught the tail end of Armin’s suggestion with a curl of the lip. “Petra aside, regardless, something just doesn’t add up here.” She sat up straight suddenly, pushed away from the desk and grabbed Armin by both wrists, beseeching him from the leather chair.

“Call Mikasa,” she said. “Maybe she doesn’t know Smith’s connected to Kenny. She might just be operating on orders from Levi. She might have no idea.”

Armin hedged. He really didn’t want to talk to Mikasa right now; his feelings were hurt. Eren was his best friend. Eren was his brother in more ways than one—more than any Brotherhood loyalty or code of honor could touch. It was why this frazzled him so much. He didn’t know what Eren was up to. Eren always told him what he was up to.

“Okay,” Armin whispered, shaking gently out of Hanji’s hands. “I’ll call her.”

* * *

**{outside sheremetyevo airport, moscow | sunday early evening.}**

Mikasa took the long way around Moscow, needing to decompress before she found a hotel. She was so exhausted. Her nerves were fried; she was on edge in a bad way, the kind of way that she recognized as dangerous. She needed to sleep, let her instincts reorganize themselves. Eren was safe with Levi. She could trust that. Levi wouldn’t let him do anything stupid with a civilian in tow. Civilians who knew too much were a liability, and if Levi hadn’t gotten rid of a liability like that by now, he wasn’t going to let Eren ruin all the hard work.

 _Hard work_. Mikasa shook her head by herself in Mike’s car. Hard work, right. Like all this bullshit with Shadis’s Titaniki, exposing a harmless civilian to a business meeting with one of the highest bosses in European Russia.

As she drove off the beltway for a hotel, her phone rang. Mikasa pulled over and stared at it for a moment. Finally she answered.

Armin snapped, “I’ve been calling you and calling you, Mikasa.”

“I’m sorry,” she said back. “I try not to talk on the phone while driving.”

“I know you’re still in Moscow,” Armin spat. “We’ve tracked you.”

“I put them on the plane,” she explained.

“And where is Erwin Smith?”

Mikasa frowned. “What?”

“ _Erwin Smith_ ,” Armin iced out. He knew, then. “The man Eren is working with behind our backs. He’s an associate of Kenny’s. We know he’s with you. We know you’ve had him in the apartment. We looked at Levi’s cameras.”

They knew. But—an associate of Kenny’s…? No one had said that to Mikasa. 

“The man was in and out of the apartment with all of you when _you_ said you found Eren at the cabin. What lie did they feed you about the son of a bitch? Why are you helping cover him? And then they dragged you to meet with Shadis—how do you know this guy hasn’t orchestrated all of this? What if he was behind Eren’s kidnapping? Mikasa, fuck, _please_ tell me you’re not involved—please, no one knows what’s going on—”

The hatred in Armin’s voice rang a chord of momentary alarm through Mikasa’s veins. She knew a lot of it was his dislike of disorganization—it made him panic very easily. He was a meticulous young man. He liked order. Mikasa closed her eyes tight and drew a long breath, trying to find her zen. She didn’t realize for a moment that she was gripping the steering wheel hard enough for her fingers to ache.

 _He’s an American_ , Levi had said Thursday night. _Hanji and co are after him because they think Eren’s fucking around. We’re going to get him out of here safely. He didn’t do anything wrong._

The alarm crystallized into fierce, precise rage—the kind of rage that was calm and cold.

Mikasa didn’t like being fooled.

She stared out at the moderately busy road where she’d parked at the curb.

She wanted to say all those things to Armin—what Levi had said to her—but suddenly she didn’t know if it was worth it. Why _wasn’t_ there a chance she’d been duped? She had no idea what had gone on before Erwin was suddenly at the apartment late the other night, back from a job with Levi and Eren. Levi’s position required a steadfast talent for lying, and Eren was just—Eren was Eren. Who fucking knew what kinds of things they kept from others? When two people fell in bed together even once, even on accident, there was something dangerous between them.

Mikasa had never said she didn’t have her own suspicions about Levi’s precarious middleman dance between Shadis and Pixis. A man couldn’t play both sides without being partial to one over the other, she thought.

“Well,” Mikasa edged out, turning the car’s engine again and making her way back to the highway. “Three men are on their way to Paris, that’s all I’ll say. Don’t tell Marco. He’ll freak out. The flights are four hours, so if we all leave now, we should get there around the time Levi will be distracted by Petra’s job.”           

Armin was quiet a moment. But the relief was obvious in his voice as he said, “We’ll get the first flight we can. Jean has a cousin there who’ll hook us up with anything we need.”

 

**END CH. IX**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translation.** please excuse me for sucking.
> 
>  *** hime** : 姫, _princess_  
>  *** lapochka** : лапочка, _sweetheart/darling_


	10. "Bye, Captain America..."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a hotel room in Paris. Erwin has a plane ticket to New York. Eren leaves -- for good. But there's still time between that and the Oprosniki staking out the hotel to enjoy pre-Petra Levi shower fresh and shower warm...

**{le meurice hotel, rue de rivoli, paris | sunday night.}**

Levi delivered on his promises—or, someone in Paris did, someone with whom Levi was in contact in that strange underground and secretive way of professional criminals that Erwin was familiarizing himself with. In the blue and gray-themed suite overlooking the courtyard and city streets, there was a complimentary bottle of wine from the hotel and a spread fit for mafia princes on one of the two twin beds.

Three pairs of fresh clothes, complete with shoes and undergarments, a luxurious fur shrug, and two briefcases with lion-shaped combination locks in which there were all sorts of expensive toiletries, French currency, packs of cigarettes, a ticket to JFK in New York scheduled for the next morning, and—hidden in the lining—handguns and rounds (and a little baggie of marijuana tied with a pink ribbon).

“Well, then,” Erwin said, raising his brows. A smile pinched his face. The sight of the airfare punched something in him that felt very bruised.

“Petra has a job in two hours,” Levi explained. “In Montmartre. I’ll leave first and wait at the café on the corner. I’ll get a taxi and you’ll tail me in another. Eren? _Ty menya slushaesh’_? You’re both playing lookout again.”

“Yup,” Eren said.

They ordered room service and took turns showering. The hot water reminded Erwin that sleeping on the flight from Moscow had been a terrible idea. Eren went next, barging in while Erwin was still in just a towel, and as Erwin and Levi ate their share of room service, he reemerged flushed from the steam and wearing nothing but a pair of clean boxer briefs.

“God, I’m starving,” he whined, and took not only his food but what Levi left when he got up to shower next.

Erwin felt numb and achy in a lethargic, depressed way. He ate his food but didn’t really enjoy it, which felt like sacrilege in such a nice Parisian hotel. It was probably just the whirlwind trip catching up with him. He was becoming the old Erwin Smith again, slowly but surely. Right now, it didn’t feel good.

“Oh,” he said, because he remembered suddenly, and he waited for Eren to look at him from where he hunched over a bowl of asparagus soup. “Are you staying, or are you leaving?”

Eren’s face darkened and immediately he looked away from Erwin. Erwin couldn’t tell if he was rethinking the whole scheme or if he was just avoiding answer. Erwin really hoped he was rethinking. Surely after the last few days, he saw now that his mafia family loved him, and nothing in the world could offer him that same belonging or care.

“If you distract him,” Eren whispered conspiratorially, cutting his eyes over to Erwin without lifting his head, “I can get out of here.”

Erwin smiled, but his heart sank very slow and hard.

“Okay,” he whispered back.

Eren abandoned his food and hustled to get dressed, scrambling into clean clothes and packing himself and his parka with loaded gun and money. “Tell him I went downstairs to smoke and to bitch about the food,” he muttered urgently, eyes wide and wild. He stopped in the doorway that led from the bedroom to the sitting room of the suite. He turned around, looking small again in that archway, swimming in that parka, with that knot in his brow. He stared at Erwin.

Erwin stared back, feeling quite helpless and hopeless where he sat cross-legged at the foot of one of the beds.

Like a tense tearjerker scene in a Valentine’s Day romance blockbuster or something, Eren strode back to Erwin, dropped to his knees before him and tumbled forward into a hard but heartfelt kiss on the mouth, which for the sake of Eren’s fantasy Erwin did not resist. The force of it rocked him backwards a bit, but he just put a hand on Eren’s side and bristled against a wince at the smack of their lips separating just as quickly as they’d connected. Something about it felt very lonely. He wasn’t sure from which end of the kiss that feeling had started. He also wasn’t sure why he’d been so willing. New Erwin was still there, somewhere, apparently.

Eren pulled away and stood again. Erwin hoped the tragic light in his eyes was regret, or indecision, but he had to accept it might only be the light of deep conviction. As Eren hurried quietly to the door, Erwin saw him outside the spa again—pacing in his executive suite—hunched on a roof, aiming for a stranger’s head— _They left him to die_ —on his knees before a stranger, on his knees before Erwin— _Why do you want to leave them?_ —lying on the floor singing Queen with that precious accent—

And now, smiling faintly, distractedly, over his shoulder. “Bye, Captain America,” Eren hummed. “Thank you for everything, _lapochka_.”

He left.

Erwin suddenly felt very heavy yet empty at the same time.

He leaned back against the bed, fighting the urge to pinch his face in his hand and weep a little. He cleared his throat. He swallowed. He cleared his throat again and closed his eyes to see if that might stop them from burning. What on earth was he mourning? Eren, a complete stranger? He wasn’t a complete stranger anymore, that was the problem. Maybe Erwin mourned the slow dying away of the new Erwin Smith he’d liked a lot more than the old Erwin Smith, with each step forward toward the end of this. Paris. Plane ticket. Eren, ditching.

Levi opened the bathroom door just a little to let steam out.

Erwin rubbed at his face and found it far too easy to pretend he was okay.

From inside the bathroom, Levi said something in Russian, presumably because he meant to speak to Eren. But Eren was not there.

Erwin cleared his throat one more time. “Eren stepped out,” he said.

Levi jerked the bathroom door open the rest of the way and looked around the suite to confirm, one brow cocked and a disdainful wrinkle to his nose. “Why?” he snapped.

“He said he was going to smoke and bitch about the food,” Erwin recited.

_Are you in love with him?_

Levi rolled his eyes and ducked back into the big marble bathroom.

“Levi,” Erwin husked.

 _He saved my life_.

Levi leaned forward to look at Erwin around the half-open door. “What?”

Erwin shrugged. “Is there time for a second affair before Petra’s job?”

_Are you in love with him?_

Levi stood there, peering at Erwin with hooded eyes. If the request excited him, he didn’t show it right away.

_I cherish him but I’m not in love with him._

Suddenly everything Erwin had perceived as normal and right was viciously broken open. He understood, now—how lives could be so deeply intertwined, but being in love was not the pinnacle definition of deep bonds. It seemed so simple and pure. He’d been a little worried, and ashamed, that maybe the reason he and Levi had come together intimately was just an instinctive defense mechanism against the element of danger, or some kind of short-circuiting, the misdirection of desires under the pulse of wild adrenaline.

But maybe that wasn’t it at all.

A smirk pulled at Levi’s lips a lot like the way he’d looked at the warehouse that first night, as Petra. He said, “Judging by last time, you’ll definitely be done by the time Eren gets back.”

Erwin laughed at this jab, not denying it. He was fully aware of his ridiculousness at this point. For a moment, he felt bad. Eren was running away and something in Erwin wanted to say something about it, but something else in Erwin was afraid of what that meant. He didn’t want Levi to hurt him for letting Eren go, because Erwin understood that mafia members probably did not spare someone just because they fucked them. He just ached inside. He wanted comfort. He wanted Levi.

For the last time, whether he made it home or Levi killed him for letting Eren go, he wanted to know that he, himself, Erwin Smith, went after what he wanted.

He held his hands out, and with a towel secured at one hip, Levi came over still tinglingly warm and flushed from the shower, hair damp and finger-tossed from his face. He’d used a soap that smelled very flowery and sweet. What a commitment to his disguise.

Running his hands up Levi’s naked thighs under the towel gave Erwin chills, hardened the lust in his veins. They kissed passionately, dreamily, like the kissing was the focus and not the way Levi’s towel came loose and Erwin ground up against his bare ass. It didn’t take much to get mindlessly stiff, and the friction of his clean clothes on his growing erection was delicious but torturous.

Without breaking away from Erwin’s mouth for more than a hot gasp or flicking tongue against his teeth, Levi fumbled him out at the fly and just narrowly avoided the zipper as he started jacking him off one-handed.

They didn’t have a lot of time, but it really wasn’t a problem—Erwin closed his hand on Levi’s hand to press together, so they could stroke each other in stride, frictation, the Ivy League rub as Erwin had heard it before, skin on hot flushed skin tight between their hands. “A-ah…” Levi uttered a vulnerable little whisper of a surprised groan, pleased, pleasured. His thumb kept swirling over lusciously sensitive places that sent sparks raining down Erwin’s spine. Pre-ejaculate made the action a little messier, but faster—shivers rattled through Erwin’s body, centered in his hips and legs.

“ _Ungh_ —” Levi inhaled sharply and came first this time—used his thumb in an effort to prevent too much more mess, probably—but it also brought come down along Erwin’s cock and the sensation was highly, deliciously shocking as Levi’s fingers tightened to the masturbatory rhythm Erwin knew personally well. Fast, fast, fast until coming, but as orgasm buzzed it was fast to the top and then a slow, hard drag down, over and over until there was nothing left to give—

Erwin hit the edge just as hard, embarrassingly so, all into Levi’s fingers as he moaned, “ _Fuck, yes!_ ” like Levi had the first time, yesterday, in the St Petersburg hotel.

Erwin threw his head back against the bed and just tried to catch his breath, muscles relaxing, aching. Levi slouched forward to rest his face on his shoulder, body dry for the most part now, fever-hot, chest heaving. When his breath slowed considerably, he turned a little, flashed Erwin a tender smirk from his shoulder. He kissed his throat. He kissed his ear. He pushed up off Erwin’s lap and wandered into the bathroom to wipe up and finish getting ready.

Erwin clung to the post-coital high as long as he could, listening to the growl and rip of tape, watching through his lashes as Levi came back into view snapping the waist of lace-patterned nylons against his upper abs, right at the ribs. He crawled up to sit on the marble counter and apply makeup without having to lean too far. The knife strapped to his upper thigh was next, then the bra—a sweater dress with a turtleneck high enough to hide his Adam’s apple. Erwin didn’t know why it fascinated him so much to watch. Maybe it was about fully accepting it still. Levi ducked behind the door again for a minute or so and when he came back out, he was fully Petra, strawberry-blonde hair and all.

He threw down some heels from his bag and stepped into them comfortably. Shrugged into a shoulder holster for two guns. Stopped like he noticed one firearm was missing, but didn’t seem to find it particularly alarming.

“I’ll be at the café,” he murmured, looking at Erwin from the archway to the sitting room just like Eren had. And God, he was the best of both worlds, somehow, bewitching and terrifying whether Petra or Levi. Erwin burned for him all over again. Levi said, “As soon as the brat’s back up here, leave. He knows what to do.”

Erwin smiled the ghost of a smile, throat tightening. “Okay, beautiful.”

Levi snorted. He shook his head and left.

Erwin crawled onto the twin bed and curled up amongst the wealth of pillows, closing his eyes. The bed was so God damn comfortable. He was very overdue for a full eight hours of sleep; he could feel his body surrendering already, his mind floating away from his head and the world spinning at the base of his spine as he listened to the distant buzz of Paris at night, outside the window.

But Eren wasn’t coming back.

He needed to figure out what on earth he was going to do, because if he didn’t he was fucked. Maybe he could tail Levi on his own, work the lookout job without Eren. Levi would be proud of him. He could say Eren just hadn’t come back, and Erwin didn’t want to leave Levi hanging.

 _What the fuck was he thinking_?

His heart jumped to his throat. Joining a criminal operation on his own, of his own volition, his own free will, with no one to help him—he’d lost it! He’d really, truly lost it.

What he needed to do was take the plane ticket, some cash, leave a note or something, go downstairs and request a new room and possibly the police, for protection. Just in case. He was in a mess of implications. He’d have to get used to witness protection, probably. He’d go home. He’d sleep next to his wife. He’d…

Someone knocked on the suite door.

Erwin’s eyes popped open.

He waited. It couldn’t be housekeeping; it was too late. Staring out at the distant lights and architecture of the city, he was frozen on the bed, eyes wide. Adrenaline chills crawled so fast and deep on his skin, it itched, like a rash.

The knock came again, more sharply this time. Muffled, someone called, “ _America?_ ”

That was… Eren?

Swiftly, the sick adrenaline snapped to confused albeit relieved excitement. Erwin swung up off the bed and hurried to open the door.

It _was_ Eren, standing there in the hall staring Erwin right in the eye. He looked okay—well, except for the bruise from his captivity, the split in his lip. It was shrinking, but he must have accidentally hit it or something, because it was opened again and bleeding a bit, smeared across his chin and cheek. He smiled brightly, eyes wide and—a little maddened, actually. Yes, there was something strange about the cold way he greeted Erwin, almost like he was trying to say something without saying anything at all. Or maybe he’d done some more cocaine.

Erwin’s smile faltered a little, brow knotting. “I’m glad you came back,” he confessed, because he couldn’t stop himself. “I had no idea what I…”

A hand reached around from beyond the threshold, shoving the door open all the way. And then storming the room, ushering Eren in and almost barreling right over Erwin, flanking in from the parts of the hall that had been out of Erwin’s line of sight, came the trio who had barged into Erwin’s St Petersburg suite only days earlier.

“ _Bon soir, monsieur!_ ” the woman cackled, grinning a Cheshire grin as her sloppy half-bun bounced at the crown of her head. She came into the room, part of a formation with the other two that was obviously an attempt to corner Erwin. She revealed the silenced gun she’d had hidden under her coat and trained on Eren. “ _Como ça va_? Enjoying your free trip to Paris, you shit-for-brains?”

“I’m really sorry, Erya…” Eren moaned.

No hesitation, Erwin bolted. Into the bedroom suite he dashed, slammed the doors, locked them—and he knew he only made it without much resistance from them because they were probably leery to shoot out a hotel beyond their turf. But also because they knew they had him trapped.

Erwin went straight for the briefcase, checking for any weapons left. There was one, for him, for playing lookout with Eren. Hands shaking, heart palpitating, he grabbed it. But it was so light, he realized it was not loaded at all. He did not know how to load a gun, let alone if there were any rounds left for him—

How could he be so quick to grab a gun? What the hell had happened to him?       

Someone kicked open the paneled bedroom doors, splintering the jambs. Erwin dropped the empty gun and closed his eyes, held up his hands to show he was unarmed and surrendering.

God, he’d been so close— _so close!_

And yet knowing that Eren was in the other room comforted him, somehow. They’d made it out of a number of intense disasters thus far. Surely they’d make it out of this one. He probably shouldn’t have invested so much trust in a former heroin addict maybe-prostitute probably-hitman rash and irreverent Russian mafia prince, but he did. He really, really did. Eren was back. Eren was _back_.

This time, Erwin did not faint from a hard hit to the head.

He just fainted.

* * *

**{rue de rivoli, paris | fifty minutes earlier, sunday night.}**

“Le Meurice,” Mikasa had informed them, without much reluctance but without much commitment, either. She looked lost in a storm of thought about this recent turn of events—or the events that had seemingly been turning all along, unbeknownst to her.

They waited in the Bolloré rented from the Autolib’ car sharing service, which with a nameless prepaid money card was Hanji’s preferred way to go when needing a relatively anonymous ride—Jean and Mikasa squished in the backseat and Armin on high alert in shotgun as they staked out Le Meurice.

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Armin kept saying, more to himself. “I don’t understand why Eren would do something like this.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t realize,” Mikasa said, voice tight and curt with self-loathing. “I don’t know how I didn’t see.”

“Just relax,” Hanji insisted. “You never know. It could be they are in the middle of taking down a new Shadis cell—right? Be optimistic.”

“Yeah, well,” Jean snapped and raked a hand through his hair. “Being _just_ optimistic isn’t very safe.”

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Armin lamented. “Why wouldn’t they tell us if they were doing that?”

“ _Eren_ —” Hanji snapped her fingers and all attention went to the lobby entrance of the hotel, where a very familiar-looking parka was bouncing fast and with a purpose down the sidewalk away from Le Meurice.

“Where’s _he_ going?” Jean snorted.

“Probably decoy,” Armin whispered.

The tension in the little electric car was almost suffocating. Eren jogged across a crosswalk and kept going up the next block.

Hanji turned to Jean. Jean nodded and clambered out of the car in urgent but clandestine pursuit.

Thirty minutes later, Petra left the hotel looking quite professional and composed. Her hair danced around her face as cars whizzed by on the Rue and she easily slid past pedestrians, three sets of intent eyes following her to a café a block and a half from the hotel.

“She has a job, though,” Armin said, brow knotting. “Why is she alone?”

“She probably intends for Kenny’s associate to tail her, or Eren if he’s not decoy,” Mikasa murmured, words paper-thin and just as soft. “That’s how she does things.”

“She’s terrifying, I wouldn’t doubt she doesn’t find open bodyguards necessary,” Armin mumbled.

Hanji chuckled. How Armin still didn’t know Levi was Petra was beyond her, but she found his sincerity to the perceived truth adorable and admirable. She did a chamber check then spun the silencer onto her gun. Watching Petra disappear into the bustling café, she said, “Once Jean gets back with Eren, we’ll have Eren take us in to Mr. Smith. And while we’re doing that…” She slid her eyes to the rearview, meeting Mikasa’s burning glare.

“Go get Petra,” Hanji told her.

Mikasa and Armin nodded in unison. Hanji grinned. She liked when things were in unison. This was going to go down as smooth as a Vivaldi concerto. Or something.

 

**END CH. X**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translations**. please excuse my sucking. 
> 
> *** ty menya slushaesh'** : ты меня слышаешь? _you hearing me?_  
>  *** lapochka** : лапочка, _darling_  
>  *** bon soir, monsieur** : _good evening, sir!_  
>  *** como ça va?** : _how are you?_
> 
> *** le meurice hotel** : imagine it! https://www.dorchestercollection.com/en/paris/le-meurice/suites-rooms/superior-suite-at-le-meurice-2/


	11. Может, может быть... (Maybe...)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren breaks. Erwin's tied to a chair for the second time. Everything blows up in their faces -- until Levi pauses the conversation to go take off his dress and makeup. Eren's lip will never heal this way. Erwin is not quite sure how to leave an affair. Are there goodbye kisses when there aren't strings attached?

**{the le meurice suite, rue de rivoli, paris | sunday night.}**

Erwin felt like he was spinning in circles. He let it happen for a moment, just fell into the dizziness. But then he tuned in to a fiery ache shooting up and down the back of his neck.

Ah, it was because his head drooped down against his chest. He tried to lift it and he groaned softly as all his bearings reorganized themselves in a shuddering, ear-ringing swirl.

He squinted into the dimly-lit hotel room, eyes adjusting through cigarette smoke.

This was the second time he’d awoken tied to a chair, and he thought maybe it was not something to get used to.

This time, though, he was tied around the middle, around the ankles, and his hands were knotted together in his lap. That was at least more comfortable.

Eren sat on the backless divan under the sitting area window, one leg crossed over a jittery knee as he tapped his own elbows with restless fingers and shook his head at Erwin like Marie sometimes did when she really had something to complain about.

“You fainted,” Eren said, voice full of blame.

Erwin groaned a little bit, still sort of disoriented.

“What?” Eren asked.

“I said…” Erwin squeezed his eyes shut again and cleared his throat. God, the stitches in his arm throbbed a little now. “I’m not going to make it home, am I?”

Eren didn’t answer.

Stationed around the room were the three who’d come after Eren at the start, back in St Petersburg after the spa hit—the woman, in a coat with the collar popped; the ash blond man, standing very near to Eren like he was ready to take him down if he tried to split; and the smaller blond one, who had Eren’s gun, and who ejected the magazine and stuck it in his pocket.

“Hanji…” Erwin recited, trying to remember. “Jean… And Arvin. Right?”

“Armin,” the blond one with Eren’s gun corrected.

“So which one of you busted Eren’s lip open again?” Erwin husked.

“Oh, funny guy, eh?” Hanji laughed and it sounded honest but then she snapped back into her focused frown and Erwin cringed in on himself, smile fading.

“We’re asking the questions,” Jean snarled.

“I’m asking the questions,” Hanji repeated, smiling though her eyes remained dark and intense. “Who the fuck are you? How do you know Kenny?”

Oh God, everything was blowing up in their faces. Erwin just needed to answer honestly. He couldn’t remember all the twists and turns of the many stories they’d come up with over the last few days, so honesty seemed his best bet.

“I don’t know anything, I swear,” Erwin sputtered, almost choked on the words. He opened his mouth to continue vowing his innocence, but the door to the suite opened, what felt like too far away. A slant of hallway light fell on the carpet there, then closed off again quickly like a vault as Mikasa and Levi walked in.

“Welcome to the party!” Hanji cried, grinning.

Mikasa closed off the last empty spot of the formation around Erwin and Eren, her eyes piercing Erwin full of fire and brimstone.

Levi—still in Petra, heels and a sweater dress, chin held high and lovely strawberry-blonde hair framing his face—walked right to the middle of the room and stood before Erwin, so that nobody could see the look he gave him. It was a very angry, very frustrated, very sharp look, and it was like he was saying silently, _Shut up and let me handle this._

Aloud, Levi said, “Hello, Erwin Smith.”    

Erwin cleared his throat. His lower back was starting to cramp.

Levi walked over to the suite’s mini-fridge, everyone’s eyes following him (except for Erwin’s, because he couldn’t turn around much). Erwin heard him open a bottle of something. He came back into the room licking his lips from a swallow of the complimentary wine, then passed the bottle over to Eren.

He gestured from Erwin to Eren. “Give your new boyfriend a drink, won’t you?” he murmured.

Erwin looked at Eren, confused. Eren looked back, just as quizzically. But then he snatched the bottle of wine and growled, “Fuck you, are you playing dumb? Are you really pinning all this on me?”

Levi shrugged. “This _is_ all your fault.”

“Don’t pretend you weren’t involved, _sukin syn!_ ”

“ _You started this when you fucked up the other night!_ ”

Armin butted in at the first chance he got, blurting something in Russian that began with a frantic, “Levi? _Vy—ona—_?”

Everyone immediately turned their attention to Armin. Then all eyes went to Levi.

Levi stood stiff, shoulders drawn up, looking like he’d bitten into something sour. Then he sighed slowly and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he grumbled, “can we all just wait a moment? So I can change? Thank you.”

Levi kicked off his heels and stomped off into the bathroom, already reaching up under his dress to remove the knife from his thigh.  

Armin choked out some more stuttering Russian. Hanji chimed in. Eren chimed in. Mikasa and Jean avoided Armin’s demanding eyes. Armin sat down on the posh slate-gray loveseat like someone had pushed him and stared at nothing in particular.

“ _Bozhi moi_ ,” he said, voice cracking.

“Oh,” Erwin said, nodding. He got it. Clearly everyone but Armin had known Petra was Levi. Poor guy. Erwin could sympathize. “I know how you feel,” he said.

Armin looked at him, wonderingly, but not because he did not understand the English. Deeply offended, he cried, “Even _you_ knew?”

They all waited in a tense, awkward silence until Levi came back out of the bathroom, hair damp in a few places from where he’d washed his makeup off. Again his eyes were ringed in faint black, damn eyeliner. But he was in a white T-shirt now, pulling up a pair of black jeans and buttoning them as he stormed back over and into the conversation.

“Okay,” he said.

All at once there was a cacophony of voices again. Erwin couldn’t keep up even if he knew anything they said. Eren noticed. He waved his hands, angrily.

“Speak English, please. He can only speak English!”

“I don’t know anything—” Erwin sputtered as soon as the noise attenuated to a sharp pause. “I was in St Petersburg for work and Eren stopped me from going into Deep Relax Spa. I don’t know anything else! I mean, I know Levi is Petra. But nothing else, I swear!”

“I thought I saw him there, but that still doesn’t make any sense,” Jean said, looking worriedly to Hanji.

Hanji sat down beside Armin on the loveseat, but she didn’t look as dazed or deflated as he did. She planted her feet wide and leaned forward against her knees like a man. She held up her gun, raised her brows, looked between Erwin, tied to the chair, and Eren, on the divan, and Levi, standing with his arms crossed and one hip cocked out slightly, guarding Erwin like he didn’t trust his friends just yet—and then Hanji set her gun down and held her hands up another time, empty.

“Okay,” Hanji said slowly. “Let’s start with the basics. Eren said you know Kenny and Shadis.”

“I don’t,” Erwin promised. “He said that to get you off our tail.”

“Why would he want us off your tail? Because you’re working together?” Hanji’s eyes sharpened behind her glasses. “Why else? Isn’t it very convenient that you joined them to a meeting with Shadis and Kenny?”

Erwin shook his head, blurting, “He wanted you off our tail because I saw something I shouldn’t have and he wanted to help me so I would help him leave the mafia.”

Everyone spun to Eren then, even Levi, where Eren sat looking terribly torn between rage and regret on the edge of his seat. But the pointed look of fury with which he’d fixed Erwin dissipated at all their attention—most specifically Levi’s, under which he wilted like a bad puppy.

“Seriously? Again?” Jean snapped. And then everyone accidentally switched back to Russian, a quick heated anecdoche that ended abruptly when Levi stomped forward and slapped Eren across the face—much harder than what probably still counted as a slap. But at least it was on the unbruised side of his face. Erwin still winced for him.

“ _Pochemu_?” Levi hissed.

Like the slap hit him back to English, Eren breathed hard and spat venomously, “I was angry at you! All of you!”

“What did we do?” Levi roared. He gestured around. “We are family—we feed you, clothe you, protect you, give you anything you could ever ask for—what did _I do_ , huh?” Levi’s voice was rising now, thick, lilting accent throwing the words to the ceiling. “I, who took you in and took care of you—who found you dying and put your bloody fucking body in my car and got you help when I could have just left you and your fucking track marks on that filthy floor for the dogs and the beggars—”

Hanji clucked her tongue.

Eren finally broke. Here it was, Erwin thought. The reason he wanted to leave. He shoved Levi away from him then spun at Jean and seethed, “Last week, you didn’t ask what I wanted for dinner!”

Jean threw his hands in the air, exasperated. “I did not think you’d mind!”

Erwin stared.

“I’m sorry,” he strained to interject, “all this because your ex-boyfriend didn’t ask you about dinner?”

It felt like he’d been sucker-punched in the gut. He didn’t mean to sound so irritated, but he _was_ a little perturbed by this new development.

Eren jabbed an accusatory finger. “He _knows_ I don’t like pizza!”

“Ex-boyfriend!” Hanji cried, like this was the funniest thing she’d heard all day.

Erwin shook his head, bewildered. “Eren, who doesn’t like pizza?”

“Levi’s always too fucking busy,” Eren hissed.

“Do you know how annoying you are in the morning?” Levi countered.

“Nobody notices when I clean up,” Armin threw in for good measure.

“Eren, you’ve got to stop stealing my clothes!” Jean snapped.

“Well, you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t on Marco’s dick like a baby on his mama’s—”

“ _Hey!_ ” Hanji waved her hands. “You know what I never told anyone? One time I got stuck in the sauna with no towels because nobody did the laundry—”

Erwin cleared his throat very loudly so everyone looked back to him.

“Look, this is a huge misunderstanding that got incredibly over-complicated, very fast,” he croaked out. “I’m just a man who was in Russia for a work conference and an affair. That’s all! I have nothing to do with—with Kenny, or anyone else. And—if I may be honest?—you all need to work on your communication. I’m just saying.”

Armin gestured hard at Levi like an airport traffic conductor. “ _Petra_?” he sputtered, like he still could not process it.

Leering up at Levi, Eren cried in a raspy, vindictive voice, “Everyone thinks I just mess things up—”

“ _Well_ ,” Jean interjected, with a disdainful scoff.

Hanji elbowed him; Levi cut him a vicious glance; Eren snarled at him. All three cried almost in unison, “ _Tikha!_ ” Erwin didn’t know what it meant, but it shut Jean up very fast.

Eren burst into tears then.

It seemed utterly heartfelt, ugly boyish tears with his teeth grinding together and his eyes smoldering with some fiery feeling trapped between rage and dejection. He beat his fists against Levi’s side as the truth finally emerged—here it was, the apex of this whole grand fiasco—and Eren kept slipping between languages as Levi kept trying to argue his way in, but Eren wouldn’t let him. Voice cracking and fraying, almost squeaking, he howled:

“I don’t get a lot of assignments anymore! _Marco_ _sprashival_ —Pixis— _ya, ya ochen’_ —not ‘stable’ enough, _nel’zya rabotat’_ too much or—I just lay around the house all day, _kazhdyy dyen’_ unless someone needs me to fuck someone for information, or decoy, or business! _Ya tol’ko_ —I’m just the hooker—”

The others’ eyes volleyed to and fro between speakers like innocent cousins at a family holiday dinner gone awry.

“Stop that,” Levi snarled, voice thick. “Stop calling yourself a hooker. You’re not a fucking hooker. I hate when you do this. You drive me mental, you drive me _so fucking_ mental sometimes.”

Russian again, suddenly. Soft, melodic Russian, and tears and sweetly whispered things—from Jean, from Armin, from everyone except Levi, but even Erwin recognized Levi was not one for public displays of affection. Eren swiped blood and snot and tears off his mouth and muttered to himself, “Damn…” because he’d opened the split in his lip again.

All the grievances were dissolving.

Erwin was kind of uncomfortable with how easily they all forgave and were willing to forget after days of fierce gunslinging pursuit. It seemed a little distorted—incongruent with the popular opinion of violent criminals and gangsters—but authentic. He felt like he knew them all now, and he was happy for them. He’d been so worried he’d ruined their unity, their sense of belonging to each other, irritated as he was that this was all because of jealousy and dinner.

“I just wanted an affair,” Erwin lamented. “I’m so sorry about all of this.”

Levi sighed again. He looked so exasperated, so inconvenienced. He said something in Russian that must have been an order to release Erwin, because Jean and Armin hurried to untie him from the quatrefoil chair.

“So…” Hanji said, taking down her hair to redo the bun, still sloppy but fashionably so, Erwin thought. “Mr. Smith has nothing to do with anything. He was just—wrong time, wrong place?”

“Yes,” Erwin and Eren and Levi chorused, in very different voices.

“And Eren lied to cover his own ass for trying to ditch and for getting Mr. Smith involved. And then he ran to you for help, Levi?”

“Yes.”

“And Mikasa was going to help Eren get him out of the country, but then Titaniki…”

“That was completely unrelated and completely bad timing.”

Hanji chewed on this. “Yeah, that all seems to make sense now,” she said. “Man, we were all convinced you plotted something behind our backs. How stupid!” She looked around at the others with an embarrassed laugh. Nobody really laughed back.

Levi grabbed his wallet and went towards the suite door. “Hanj,” he said. “Let’s get you guys a room for the night.”

###

Under his breath, Eren sang softly, “ _Mozhet, mozhet byt’ smozhem. My razorvat’ okovy sna i vmeste budem navsegda…_ ”

Erwin rolled over gingerly, just a little; Eren heard it, the rustle of sheets and comforters, the gentle bounce of the mattress. He opened his eyes slowly, peering at Erwin through his lashes. Erwin stared back, eyes reflecting city lights that streamed in through the bedroom windows and bounced off the bathroom mirrors.

Erwin murmured, “I love your accent, and it almost goes away when you’re singing Queen, but I think I like it more when you sing in Russian.”

A faint blush tingled under the apples of Eren’s cheeks. He nestled lower into his blankets like they might hide him from the compliment. “Thanks,” he grumbled.

“What are you singing?”

“‘Kotik,’” he said. “Alexander Rybak. Pop.”

“Hmm…” Erwin hummed, nodding a little.

Levi was in the sitting area of the suite, asleep on the loveseat practically hugging his knife with his guns on the end table just above his head. Eren could hear his kitten snores, intermittent and whispery. He’d taken the couch so Erwin and Eren each got a bed—probably also so he could know if anyone tried to leave—or enter—the room in the night. He’d had Mike call to reschedule Petra’s meeting for the following day, after sticking Erwin on a plane, and with enough time to get back to St Petersburg to get Pixis at the airport like nothing had happened at all.

From his bed by the window, Erwin whispered, like they were children evading bedtime, “Hey, you know, I got shot yesterday.”

Eren sat up on his elbow, eyes widening. “ _Shto-shto_?”

“Huh?”

“What? You got shot?”

Erwin laughed soundlessly, just an open-mouthed smile. Eren thought it was very encouraging how an older man like him could look so young and sweet, smiling in the dark. “I guess it was more—a bullet grazed me. Levi stitched it. It hurts right now, though.”

“Excellent,” Eren said through a little grin. “You’re one of us, eh? You need pain medicines?”

“I think I just need to sleep.”

A soft, cradling quiet fell between them. Eren laid back down on one arm. Sleep was nipping at his heels, too. It had been an exhausting five days—though, in all truth, the most exhausting had been being honest to everyone in the suite sitting room when Erwin had been tied to a chair.

“Eren…” Erwin murmured from his bed.

“Eh?” Eren replied around a yawn.

“What they said…” Erwin shifted around a little again. “When you told them you were running away. Is this not the first time you’ve done this?”

Eren didn’t answer, because he felt a little guilty.

“Were you never serious about leaving at all?”

Eren clucked his tongue disparagingly. The bruise of guilt just deepened as he realized Erwin might be angry, might feel used.

Eren frowned, lowering his eyes but looking at nothing in particular, just fiddling with the pillowcase near his cheek. “Sometimes I feel like everything is pointless,” he said. “Like I’m a bad person, and everyone would be better off if I were gone. Whatever I feel, whatever I stand for, nothing matters. The world’s just going to keep spinning to hell whether I’m here or not.”

“You weren’t actually mad at them,” Erwin surmised. “You just wanted them to prove they care about you.”

“Oh, they make me mad a lot.” Eren shrugged stubbornly, avoiding the accusatory tone hiding between Erwin’s words. “And I just need a break sometimes. So yeah, maybe it was an excuse. Name me selfish.”

“Why don’t you just ask for a break?” Erwin’s eyes glinted at him from his bed, but he didn’t look angry. He just looked very sad. Sad for Eren. Eren frowned more, body tense. He didn’t need anyone feeling sad for him. He wasn’t helpless or sad.

“Let me tell you something, Eren,” Erwin said very firmly but somehow softly from his bed. He wasn’t smiling; his eyes were still a little distant and dark. Eren braced for a lecture, for Erwin to tear into him about how unfair it was Eren had involved him in something that ultimately meant nothing.    

Erwin husked, “You are a very good person. I think being a good person is dependent on a lot of complicated factors, not just—just actions or reactions. In fact, being with all of you made me wonder if I’m a bad person, somehow.”

“What?” Eren scoffed. “You’re just an innocent guy who I fucked up. Over. Fucked over.”

“What was it that you said? About blood being thicker than water?”

“No,” Eren said. “No, it’s ‘blood of the covenant is thicker than blood in the veins.’”

“What does that mean?”

Eren’s throat was raw; his fingers tightened in the blankets. “It means that— _tak_ , ah…” He said it under his breath in Russian like it might help him translate the unspoken meaning of it better. “It means it is not about where you come from, but where you are. It means family is not about mothers or fathers. It means there is a holy bond when someone takes a bullet for you, when someone shares your same pain, when you have a mother who is not your real mother, and a sister who is not your real sister, when you get your blood all over the backseat of his car—a bond, an unbreakable bond—”

Oh.

Eren swung a look around to pin Erwin with a betrayed pout, realizing that Erwin already got what the saying meant, he just wanted Eren to say it aloud. Eren’s face burned again. He buried into the pillow for a moment, fighting the emotional tightening of his throat and the stinging of his eyes.

“You belong somewhere,” Erwin said, flatly. “That’s something, you know. I said it before and I’ll say it again. You belong somewhere. You know what? I have no idea what that is like. I’m about to go home and I’m terrified I don’t belong there, in that job, in bed with my wife, in—in any part of it. I feel like I’m going home and have to become a stranger.”

Eren kept his face in the pillow for a while. Finally he rolled over and looked at Erwin even though Erwin had looked away. “Erya, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you out with your affair. Ah, well, we tried.”

Erwin chuckled dryly, shook his head. After a moment he met Eren’s eyes again. “I’m not sorry,” he murmured kindly. “I wouldn’t want an affair with you.”

“Well, tell me how you are really feeling,” Eren muttered.

“No, no—” Erwin held a hand out to stop Eren from getting the wrong idea. He gestured gently, like he had to coax the words out of himself. “No, I mean… I would not change the way this went, I think.” He paused. “Okay, I could have done without the second time tied to a chair. But the rest of this—helping Levi that night, the cabin, tonight—I would not change anything, Eren. So do not apologize. In fact, let me thank you.”

Eren was dumbstruck. For a moment, he was even a little confused. But then a deep ache hummed to life in his chest—and it was the strangest thing, that it felt like happiness.

“Erwin Smith,” he said, “I’m kind of scared I’m going to miss you.”

Erwin laughed lightly. “I don’t believe it. You’ll forget about me.” The tone of his voice told Eren he didn’t actually believe what he said; in fact, he sounded relieved Eren would miss him. He sounded like what he meant to say was, _I think I might miss you, too._

Eren wiggled out of his blankets and hopped over to Erwin’s bed, wedged his way in next to him, pushing until Erwin had scooted over enough to leave Eren the edge already warmed by his big body.

“Eren,” Erwin laughed cautiously, “I told you, I’m not having an affair with you…”

“Fuck off!” Eren pouted, but then as he laid down with his back to Erwin and one arm hanging comfortably off the side of the bed, he smiled to himself. “It’s just that I can’t sleep alone.”

###

**{le meurice and charles de gaulle airport, paris | monday.}**

There was no packing up in the morning, because the little mafia group was staying in Paris a bit longer. It made Erwin feel like he was not actually leaving, and that was somewhat unkind—not of them, but of the universe.

Levi told Eren to go to the second suite, with the others. He leaned in the doorway of the suite bedroom, watching Erwin dress. Erwin didn’t mind. That awful numbness had already been there again when he woke up; it was a little frightening, to not feel anything, not even relief or excitement, but he decided it was better than anything else right now. Maybe it was more because of the pain pill Eren had given him. It was very strong, took away the throb of his stitched arm and made the tension tingle out of his shoulders and back.

“We’re very sorry about this,” Levi hummed. “Mostly Eren is sorry, seeing as it’s his fault. It would be greatly appreciated if all of this was promptly forgotten about.”

Erwin went into the fine bathroom to wash his face, un-daze himself a little bit. He understood what Levi meant. If it was rare for someone like Eren to defect from a powerful international crime system, it was even rarer for an uninvolved civilian to get out unscathed. If he told anyone what he’d witnessed, somehow, somewhere, the Russians would get him. It was as easy as that.

Erwin wandered back out and over to the bedroom window, drying his face with the lush little hand towel. Outside, Paris was bustling and full of life, autumn sunshine winking off fast cars and the spires on ancient buildings. Erwin slid his eyes to Levi, not caring if Levi saw the way his gaze roamed him almost in enchantment.

Levi stood, arms crossed, head against one of the embossed doors. There was something tight and reticent about him today, something withdrawn, but Erwin didn’t mind. He just wanted to take in the last good look of him before going home. Nothing sexual, just honestly admiring him, man to man, because he felt like he could now, when he couldn’t before—the shadows under Levi’s eyes probably from stress as much as stubborn eyeliner, the unintentionally fashionable way his sleep-tousled hair fell across his brow, the smooth slope of his shoulders and line of his side, the way one knee bent a little, all his weight on the other. His face was rather elflike, perfectly even and sharp, but soft at the same time, almost androgynous, lent a mystery to him that was dangerous and bewitching. But maybe that was more because of the way he carried himself, with class and invulnerable composure, a self-surety in his step as sure as the arcing kick he’d slammed into a thug’s head in a dark industrial yard.

Maybe Erwin was trying to memorize Levi because he wanted to make sure he didn’t forget the things Levi had broken open in him—the way Levi made him feel.

For a moment, it made him nervous, the way Levi squinted at him like they hadn’t slept together—good Lord, _twice_. But then Erwin understood, and without much overthinking, either, which was nice. It wasn’t a bad thing at all.

An affair was a temporary thing. Erwin accepted that. He was a little afraid of permanence at the moment. In fact, he kind of reveled in the expiration date of an affair. It was relieving. It was liberating. He’d exorcised something inside, and he felt like he could breathe freely, walk fast, sleep well. No wonder Nile had suggested it. Casual sex—never before had he imagined he’d experience an aversion to commitment, and hopefully that bold, hungry restlessness would fade before he got home to Marie, but regardless, he kind of liked it. There was a freedom about this, an emotional freedom. An unspoken oath and a raw, authentic connection untainted by baggage or extraneous details. Maybe a lot of it had to do with the fact that he had not slept with a prostitute—perpetuated an epidemical dehumanization in a way he thought now he would have hated himself for had he actually gone through with it—but someone he was forced to view as a person. Quite a few individuals the last few days, he’d been forced to realize were not merely demographics or villains but each their own _person_.

It just felt very real, somehow. And if he never grasped the existentiality of that, it was okay, because at least he felt it and knew it was not a fantasy. To feel real.

“What?” Levi murmured.

“Hmm?” Erwin replied, raising his brows.

“You’re staring at me. You have something to say, tough guy?”

Erwin smiled, eyes lowering. “No. I’d say thank you, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear it.”

“You’re right,” Levi said, softly. “I don’t want to hear it. I hate when people say out loud the things that others already know.”

Erwin thought, were they supposed to kiss or something? In farewell? Was that how an affair worked? Did double-timing drag-undercover criminal princes kiss their impulse lovers farewell, or…?

“ _Gospodin_ _Smit_ , you are very obvious,” Levi said through a bitter smirk, and he crossed the room, slowly, curled his fingers gently in Erwin’s shirt and craned up as Erwin went down. Their mouths caught with a little spark of that strange chemistry that ran like a current between them, fine when undisturbed but exploding in a cobweb of lightning jolts and branches when broken.

Erwin’s hand went to the back of Levi’s head, combed into that soft dark hair, held him there gently. Outside, someone honked very loudly on the Rue. The colors shimmered and moved under the overcast fall sky—the Louvre, the Seine, the trees of the Champs-Elysées. The kiss was nothing very special, just a firm sealing of the lips that seared its shape and its comfort into Erwin’s mouth a breath and a half before Levi pulled away, and Erwin had Queen’s _Bohemian Rhapsody_ stuck in his head.

###

They gave him money, already exchanged for American currency. They walked him as far as non-passengers could go at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

“ _Da vis danya!_ ” Erwin called from line, waving a little.

Eren laughed, waving back harder. “You said it wrong, _dorogoi_ , it’s _da svidanya!_ ”

Erwin’s smile sagged a bit in embarrassment, but he didn’t really care. His passport was stamped. He rounded a corner, and he couldn’t see them anymore—Eren in his parka, Levi with his hands in his pockets and a long double-breasted coat hanging open with the collar popped.

Erwin got on the plane and an hour later, Paris was gone below the clouds.

###

**{new york and seattle | sunday, american time.}**

At the port of entry, Erwin almost choked on his tongue when the inspector went over his customs form and asked, “What was the purpose of your trip?”

“Business,” Erwin replied curtly.

The inspector looked him up and down and made a funny face.

Erwin wasn’t sure why. He was in a nice French coat and shining shoes and clean slacks. “A work conference,” he tried again. “Langdon and Lawrence. It’s a Seattle company—”

“Do you have any items to declare?”

“Nope. No, none. I lost my wallet and my luggage.”

The inspector gave him another funny look. “Sorry to hear that.”

“I’ll tell you the truth,” Erwin said, leaning close to the podium. “It’s embarrassing, but I have no idea where my things are. Is there somewhere I can file a report about that?”

“Why didn’t you file a report with local police?”

“I was busy—I was having an affair.”

The inspector cleared his throat and asked Erwin to step aside and wait for someone to wand him.

In a large public restroom on his way to connect to his last flight, as he washed his hands from using the urinal, Erwin caught a glance of his reflection and was momentarily frightened—he almost didn’t recognize himself.

His hair was all sorts of a mess. He looked pale and haggard, some blond stubble along his jawline already showing (that was to be expected, though; he’d shaved last over seven hours ago). There were dark shadows under his eyes, weary shadows, shadows that made his stare look very hollow and eerieю Distant, dead.

Erwin splashed at his face and hurried to catch his next flight.

During the homeward descent into SeaTac, his eyes burned as he watched the city lights blur together in the nighttime rain. He thought about what he needed to do: call and put holds on all his bank accounts, if his banks had not already frozen them for suspicious activities in Russia; go to the doctor and have his arm looked at, in case there was an infection starting or the stitches weren’t done properly; call work immediately and explain at least half of what had happened, even if they wouldn’t believe him. Nile might back him up, though. This was pretty much all Nile’s fault.

God, he wished he could tell someone all about the last week. But he couldn’t.

Not because he feared for his life, but because he feared no one would care.

Erwin took a taxi home through the rain because Marie didn’t answer his payphone calls. That was odd, at least a little. There still seemed to be no search in progress for him. He was home a day early, but he’d been convinced the company would have been worried when he didn’t check in to the conference, nor answer e-mails, nor answer or make any phone calls. Maybe they’d presumed his phone didn’t work internationally. Maybe, if they’d called his hotel number, they’d just assumed he was out. Still, he thought his absence would have been highly alarming.

The house was dark and locked-up when Erwin dragged himself to the front door. Marie didn’t usually go to sleep so early. Maybe she was out, then, with her friends.

The dog came running excitedly when Erwin opened the front door with the spare key, which he’d dug out from the potted plant on the porch. “Hey, Bruce Willis,” Erwin greeted him, scooping the mini-Yorkie up into one arm. “Where’s your mommy, huh? Where’s Marie?”

An empty wine bottle sat in the dark on the coffee table. It smelled like Italian food in the kitchen. Bruce Willis’s tiny pink tongue darted in Erwin’s ear amongst happy dog kisses and Erwin laughed, putting him down. The dog followed him down the hall to the bedroom, where Erwin opened the door and found Marie, naked and fucking Nile in their expensive Thomasville brand bed.

Nile sputtered, “Who the hell—?” and struggled to see from underneath Erwin’s wife. He was naked, too.

“Erwin!” Marie shouted, like this was somehow Erwin’s fault. Then her eyes went wide and she hissed, “I _knew_ I confused the days of his trip—”

“You didn’t,” Erwin said, very calmly. “I’m back a bit early.”

“Erwin!” Nile cried through a laugh. It was the kind of greeting that accompanied a slap on the back or something. But Nile could not do that, because he was preoccupied with Marie’s body. “Erwin, buddy—you look like _shit_ —”

“Nile, shut up,” Marie said through her teeth.

“Oh my God,” Erwin murmured to himself, everything clicking suddenly like a row of dominoes in his mind. “This has been happening behind my back for a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Since high school,” Nile offered, at least with the decency to sound severely guilty.

Marie pulled at the blanket to cover herself like her husband had never seen her naked before.

“Well, Marie,” Erwin said, and his voice was a little thin. “I’m glad I said all those mean things about you to Levi.”

“Levi? A guy at your conference?” Marie asked, trying to crawl off and away from Nile.

“No,” Erwin said. “The Russian gangster I had sex with, twice.”

Nile sat up on his elbows and Marie went rigid like she’d been turned to stone, then started to cry.

“You cheated on me with a _man_?” she wailed.

Erwin had learned a lot about himself on his business trip.

He imagined himself flying into a conscious and violent outrage then, as the new Erwin Smith, taking a page from Eren or Levi’s books—yelling, and throwing things, and threatening in a hissing way, saying, “I shot a man for a drug addict ex-prostitute who survived having his throat slit, I worked two mafia deals for a criminal genius who gave me a field stich in a hotel room, I used a fake passport and basically stole a car and I had the _best fuck_ of my life—”

But Marie and Nile—they did not deserve that new Erwin Smith.

So Erwin turned around and went back down the hall. He scooped Bruce Willis up into one elbow. Marie called for him. Nile called for him. With his free hand, Erwin checked his coat pockets for his passport and his money. He opened the safe behind the wine rack and took the paperwork for accessing the money his father left him when he died, took the bank card for the savings account he and Marie had said they wouldn’t touch until retirement, he took his spare car keys from the hook near the door and opened the garage.

Erwin got in the car, which he was very glad was not an Audi. As he pulled out of the driveway with Bruce Willis in his lap, Nile and Marie came running out into the damp dark—Marie pulling on Nile’s shirt, Nile with a sheet wrapped around him. The car headlights bounced over them.

This was definitely a midlife crisis.

It did not feel quite as bad as Erwin had expected.

Bruce Willis stood on his hind legs to watch the nighttime lights stream by outside the car window. Erwin punched at the radio stations, absentmindedly. He stopped when he hit the classic rock station—Queen was playing. See, now? Erwin could already breathe a little easier. As he drove to his mom’s house twenty minutes up I-5 in Everett, he went over his to-do list again, which had grown by a few items.

Call his bank about his cards and ask about how to change a joint account to a personal account. Call work—take some time off if he still had a job. If he was in hot water, bargain a probationary transfer instead of termination, he’d even take an overseas position. Go to the doctor. Call a divorce lawyer. File the paperwork to receive the fifty grand his father left him.

Look up a one-way ticket to St Petersburg, Russia.

  

**END.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **translation**. please excuse me for sucking. 
> 
> *** sukin syn** : сукин сын, _son of a bitch_  
>  *** vy** : вы, _you_ (formal/plural)  
>  *** ona** : она, _she_  
>  *** bozhi moi** : боже мой, _my god_...  
>  *** pochemu** : почему, _why?_  
>  *** marco sprashival** : marco спрашивал, _marco asked_  
>  *** nyet** : нет, _no_  
>  *** ya, ya ochen'** : я, я очень, _i, i really_...  
>  *** nel'zya rabotat'** : нельзя работать, _i can't work_  
>  *** kazhdyy dyen'** : каждый день, _every day_  
>  *** ya tol'ko** : я только, _i only_  
>  *** moxhit bit'** ... : может быть ..., _maybe ..._ lyrics from alexander rybak (александр рыбак), _kotik_ (котик)  
>  *** shto-shto** : что-что? _what was that?_   
> *** gospodin smit** : господин смит, _mr. smith_  
>  *** da svidaniya** : да свидания, _good bye!_


End file.
